ACI 3

How wonderful it would be if we could also help them in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they would go on to stop their distress forever.

We are learning that that is possible, and so I invite you to grow that wish into a longing, and maybe into an intention, and even into a determination—if you feel ready.

Then turn your mind back to your precious holy guide.

We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn, yet what we need to do yet to become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way.

So we ask them, Please, please teach me that.

They're so happy that we've asked, of course they agree.

Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite and so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create.

We imagine we can hold it in our hands and we offer it to them, following it with our promise to practice what they teach us, using our refuge prayer.

Here is the great earth

Filled with fragrant incense and covered with a blanket of flowers.

The great mountain, the four lands

wearing the jewel of the sun and the moon.

In my mind, I make them the paradise of a Buddha and offer it all to you.

By this deed

may every living being experience the pure world.

I go for refuge until I am enlightened,

To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest,

May I reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being.

I go for refuge until I am enlightened,

To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest,

May we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being.

I go for refuge until I am enlightened,

To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest,

May all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every other.

Course Introduction

There are as many kinds of meditations as there are meditators, and there are many goals for meditation—probably as many goals as there are meditators as well.

When we see meditation being recommended in our worldly world, it tends to call upon the benefits of bringing about a calmness, lowering blood pressure, increasing our copability. Is that a word? Maybe to access our intuition?

The most recent one to make miracles happen, to manifest.

All of those are legitimate. They are true.

You can achieve those kinds of goals with meditation.

But in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, which is a Mahayana tradition, meditation is the tool through which we train ourself in the concentration necessary to reach the direct perception of ultimate reality and then to progress through those levels of our spiritual path to our goal—which for a Mahayanist, that goal is total enlightenment. Reaching Nirvana along the way—of course—but not staying at that level.

Through that progress along our spiritual path, the benefits will be improved blood pressure, less anxiety, improved copability.

But the other benefits will be the elimination of one's aging, illness, death and forced rebirth, which isn't commonly what you hear meditation teachers saying would be included in your goal.

Within Tibetan culture, which the Tibetan Mahayana tradition is a 1000 plus years old, the system of meditation has been very well tuned. It's a very efficient system with very specific guidelines.

The idea is if we learn those guidelines and follow them, we will make this progress towards these goals.

In these guidelines, there are the six preliminaries, there are the seven ingredients, there are the instructions about the obstacles and corrections, and we'll learn all of that.

All of these things serve us in the way that warmups and training drills help an athlete or a performer of any kind, whether it be musician, artist, athlete.

We warm up and we train in our skills, and then we can perform.

Meditation will be the same: Putting together the right circumstances, putting together the right warmups and training skills, used on a regular basis so that progress can happen.

Meditation is no different than learning a new skill or dieting. It can't be an on and off event and expect progress to the level of being able to perform. But little regular effort will build up in such a way that we become proficient by way of repetitiveness.

These teachings don't specifically say, Do this karma to make the result of good meditation. But when we see what the instructions are and the preliminary practices include, if we're thinking of it in terms of, What seeds are these making me plant? And how will those seeds ripen in the form of a deep meditation practice and progress along my path?

We'll see that it's in fact what's being taught is because of karma and emptiness, and we don't even have to know it at this level, level 2 of the ACI courses.

We follow the instructions, but it's so much more helpful to be able to follow instructions when we understand why the instructions are given to us.

To my beginner's group that starts tomorrow, we probably won't talk about this so much, but in this group, because you're already karma and emptiness fluent, I am going to try and help us keep our minds on the planting that we're doing as we're learning these methods and what those methods are making us plant.

We understand that the circumstances of our future are created through our moment by moment interaction with others—actions, speech, thought.

With meditation, when we finally get on our cushion and settle in, we're working on the thought level. But there are outer circumstances that we work with as well in order to cultivate the seeds that will allow our on cushion time to be powerful.

This is our 3rd ACI course in the series of 15 primary courses, 3 review.

The first one we studied the Three Principle Paths—the three principle realizations we need to cultivate: renunciation, Bodhichitta and correct worldview.

Then in course 2, we studied refuge and the wish. Really, it was already Prajnaparamita level because we are talking about refuge and the wish, not just refuge. But that class was mostly definitions of things. The definition of refuge, the definition of Buddhist refuge, the definition of emptiness, the definition of dependent origination. You remember those lists?

Nirvana, Bodhichitta, enlightenment,… all still fairly theoretical if you were new.

I've been told by people later, You know, those first couple of courses you taught Sarahni, I was just swimming so confused. I couldn't figure it out.

I don't know. I thought they were getting it, but I understand that it's like until you see the bigger picture, all these little details just seem like confetti flying around.

This course is meant to be more practical, but my own experience was, it didn't seem practical at all, because we never actually sat down and meditated. We learned all the details of how to do it, but then we were left on our own to try them on for size.

So I am going to teach it that way because that's how it was taught to me. But then, after we finished the 11 classes, I would like to spend four more classes together and we'll try it out and we'll explore the different stuff and see how that goes.

That's going to take us into Chinese New Year. So sorry, but no homeworks, no quizzes, just some fun classes.

Scriptural Sources

The purpose of this course is to teach us what we need to know to be able to create a meditation practice that will serve our career through the stages of our spiritual growth all the way to total enlightenment.

The readings come to us from a couple of different sources.

One is from a prayer called the King of Prayers, the prayer of Samantabhadra dating to 500 BC. So this was a teaching given by Lord Buddha and it's offered both in the Kangyur and the Tengyur. I don't quite know what they mean by that. There are many commentaries on the prayer of Samantabhhadra and within that prayer is this discussion about how to prepare for meditation, not how to do meditation, but how to prepare.

Then we'll also study from Lama Tsongkapa from his Lam Rim Chen Mo.

It has a section that is a commentary on the prayer of Samantabhadra and it has a section on commentary of Master Kamalashila's Gom Rim, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

Lama Tsongkapa was a Kagyu Buddhist, but who also held the Nyingma lineage and who studied with the Sakyas. What do you call that when somebody is like, is part of all the different traditions? There's a word for that and I can't think of it, multi-denominational or something like that.

Then, he was so extraordinary that a whole other lineage of Buddhism came from him. They say he founded it, but I don't think he set out to say, I'm going to make a new lineage of Buddhism. It was that his teachings were so extraordinary that people said, I'm going to study him, and it's come all the way. Yeah, nice multiverse.

It's come all the way down to our time, as the Gelukpas. There weren't Gelukpas when Je Tsongkapa was growing up. It is kind of hard to keep that in mind. So he was extraordinary. We know his dates 1357 to 1419.

He wrote thousands of pages of text and commentaries. They say they're so deep and thorough that the monasteries spend years studying them and never actually finish. I hope some of them start from the back and go to the forward, so at least they meet in the middle at some point. Because if they never finish, nobody knows the punchline.

Two primary texts: prayer of Samantabhadra and Je Tsongkapas Lam Rim Chenmo commenting on that prayer.

The 5 parts of a Meditation Practice

There are five major parts of a meditation practice. I'm going to tell you about them in this class, but then each one gets its own class. So we'll go into the details.

The first of the five parts is called preparing for meditation, all the different steps necessary to prepare ourselves.
The second major part is called the six conditions of the environment, meaning our physical space.
The third is called preparing your bodily posture. And in this tradition that bodily posture is called the eight point posture of Vairochana. That class will come from Je Tsongkapa‘s Lam Rim Chenmo, but from the section about Master Kamalashila's text called Gom Rim.

Actually Master Kamalashila wrote three different texts and all three are called Gom Rim, which means stages of meditation. It's very confusing, because they're not just addition one, addition two, addition three. They actually cover different materials.

I don't know the history of them well enough. In our bok jinpa at Diamond Mountain, we studied them in depth.

Master Kamalashila was an Indian master around 900 AD. He was invited to Tibet to teach. And about the same time there was a Chinese monk that was also in Tibet teaching meditation. The meditation that the Chinese monk was teaching was a meditation in which you worked to stop your mind, to bring your mind to stillness, believing that that was what it was to reach Nirvana.

Master Kamalashila's emptiness meditation method seemed completely the opposite, because his method was, No, park your attention on a powerful virtuous object and explore it so precisely that you come to experience its dependent origination, and so its true nature, its lack of self nature. Which takes a lot of mental activity.

And these two were so opposite and there was conflict. Who's right? What should we do? And when there was conflict in those days, the king would call a debate, and the debate was open to—in terms of audience—it was open to anybody. So lay people would come, monastics would come, students, masters, king.

The two would debate each other however long it took until finally it was determined one‘s argument, one's explanations clearly revealed which method would be more beneficial given the goal of progress along a spiritual path.

Guess who won: Master Kamalashila. And the rules were that whoever won the debate, everybody would accept that as the answer. So everybody turned to Master Kamalashila's method of meditating and I don't know, presumably, so did the Chinese monk, if he stayed in Tibet, I don't know. They call him the Huangshang, it wasn't his name, but I am not sure what that means. I think it's just the Chinese monk or something.

So Master Kamalashila has a lot to say about how to meditate, and one of them is this eight point posture of Vairochana that we will learn.

We're still talking about the five major parts for a meditation practice. We're on the fourth one.

The fourth part is called the mental process of meditation. In this we will learn the five obstacles that we will meet along our meditation career. We will learn the eight antidotes to apply to overcome those obstacles, and we will learn the nine levels of meditative concentration, so that we can track our progress and know how to apply our practices to moving ourselves along from the
1. very beginning level, which is where we can't keep our mind on our meditation object for very long at all. It's like we think of it and then we're thinking about everything else. Then we're on it and off, and on it and off—level one.
2. Then level two, we're on it, but then off. On it, then off. Still off more than on.
3. Then level three, we get to the place where we're on and then we lose it and we come right back, patching the gaps it's called.
4. And finally we get to the point where we can put our mind on our object of meditation and actually stay there for the length of time that we've said we're going to stay there. But within that, on the object, we're dull, we're agitated, we're swinging back and forth between dullness and agitation—and all of that takes effort. That effort keeps us from reaching that level where our mind is focused enough to actually penetrate to the true nature of the object.

So these nine levels, to be able to work our way through them systematically, helps us reach that level where we sit down to meditate and due to our practice efforts, the karmic seeds planted by our efforts, we sit down and immediately go into single pointed concentration on the object for the length of time that we have predetermined, effortlessly. That's the platform from which we can then actually investigate or analyze the nature of the object that we've placed before our mind. Until we can hold it with that kind of consistent, effortless, mental penetration, our attempt at reaching direct dependent origination and then direct ultimate reality, we'll be interrupted because our mind isn't a powerful enough microscope.

Then the fifth thing that we'll learn is actually about the object of meditation. The meditation itself is just the tool. You're making your mind into a powerful microscope. What you put under the lens of the microscope influences our mind. You could put under the lens of a microscope any old interesting thing, and it would be useful for building the power of your microscope. If we use a powerful karmic object as our meditation object, we are growing the goodness of focusing our mind on something virtuous all the while that we're just practicing focusing our mind on something. The added benefit of using a powerful karmic object as our meditation object is that every moment we're actually trying, we're gathering goodness.

Any deep meditation, we are not harming physically. We are not harming verbally. As long as we're on our meditation object and itself is not a harmful thing, we're not harming mentally either. To be not harming is gathering goodness, but to have the not harming and the mind focused on a powerful karmic object, now you've got virtue being built into your meditation cushion time. Our minds are influenceable. They are being influenced all the time. What we spend time with it, influences it. So our meditation time is a time that we are very intentionally influencing our minds by way of a powerful karmic object. We'll learn about what those powerful karmic objects can be.

Meditation Vocabulary

In the world of meditation handed down from ancient times, there are many words that are used in different meditation traditions for different qualities or levels of meditation. The Sanskrit words we could say would be the foundation, assuming that it's coming out of the Indian tradition that we're studying.

When the Sanskrit literature moved into Tibet and the Tibetans translated, sometimes they translated really literally, and sometimes they translated to get the bigger idea of the word.

In meditation, there are six main words that are used for meditation, but they have these different connotations.

Geshe michael wanted us to be familiar with these six different words for meditation. There's more than six, but these are the six apparently most common ones that come up. I have a vocabulary list for you:

Here are these six different words. Six with the extra one thrown in.

I have the Tibetan followed by the Sanskrit.

Vocabulary

Tibetan Sanskrit Meaning

Gompa bhavana getting used to/ habituate

Sam-ten dhyana perfection of concentration

Nyom-juk samapatti balanced meditation/causal meditation

Shiney shamatha peace stay (stillness)

Hlaktong Vipashyana exceptional seeing, insight

Ting-nge-dzin samadhi single pointed focus

Nyam shak jetop yeshe word for that sequence of events in deep

meditation—seeing emptiness directly and

experiencing the four Arya truths

The first one is Gompa, in Sanskrit bhavana. It is the general word for meditation. It means to get used to something, habituate would be an English word. It means the practice of repeatedly doing something in order to get so familiar with it that it becomes automatic.

We've all done such things. We had to learn to tie our shoes and we did it again and again and again and it was difficult when we were first learning, but by the time we're six years old, no sweat. You tie your shoes.

Learning to play a piano, to play a particular song, you play it, you play it, you play it. Pretty soon you don't need the music anymore, you can play it.

I know you all have your own examples. But take the time to think of it. There was something I had to put in the effort to learn to do, and I did it again and again and now I do it without thinking about it.

How about driving? We're habituated to driving. That's the idea of bhavana—gompa, to repeat, repeat, repeat until we're habituated to it. But now because we've already studied the five paths, most of us, the fourth path is Gomlam—it's the same word. To get used to, the path of getting used to living according to what you now know is true because of your Gomlam. It's the same idea, to get used to.

The next word, Tibetan is Samten, Sanskrit Dhyana. Here Samten it‘s the name for the fifth perfection in Mahayana, the perfection of concentration. It's called Samten.

It's a long story what the perfection of concentration actually means, because it's not just that you are a perfect meditator. But here's the kicker. Samten is also the name for four levels of meditative concentration, which by spending time in those levels— any one of those levels—we're planting seeds into our minds that if one of those seeds is the projected karma at the end of this life. They project us into the corresponding level of the form realm. Which is not something that a Mahayana Buddhist is wanting to achieve. But it's called the first Samten, the second Samten, the third Samten, and the fourth Samten. Those terms relate both to those four form realms, and the term relates to the meditative concentration that plants the seeds to create one of those levels.

Yet, the same word Samten is the word for the Bodhisattva‘s perfection of meditation, which is not going to lead you to one of those form realms. Again, the reason to know is that we may come across the word Samten, and we would want to be clear, What are they talking about here? The form realm, those meditations that would lead you to the form realm or to a Bodhisattva’s perfection of meditation?

We would need to figure it out by way of the context or ask if we're in a teaching.

I think that we've heard that the reason the form and formless realms are not something that we aspire to reach is because although they are exquisitely pleasurable states of existence, they are so pleasurable that the one who is in that reality makes no effort whatsoever to progress on their spiritual path.

There's no inclination to do so.

There's no inclination to share the pleasantness with anyone else because everyone is just as blissed out if you are aware of others.

But, what's happening is that you're using up all that good karma without doing anything to perpetuate it. You are not doing any negative, but one would still have negative karma in their continuum, so that when all that goodness does come to an end, all you have left is past negative seeds and that realm ends for you and a new realm starts, which they say is not pretty.

So we don't aspire to form or formless realm relief from suffering. It is relief from obvious suffering, from suffering of change, and even to some extent it's relief from pervasive suffering until the very end, and then it all starts back up again.

What we want to reach is a Samten level of concentration that's so focused with such precision that we can take our microscope and go from the lens of, Here's my virtuous object and I've got my lens finely focused on my virtuous object without subtle dullness, without subtle agitation, effortlessly staying there.

Then I'm able to shift the lens to the lens of dependent origination without getting distraction, without getting dullness.

Then I'm able to take that lens and shift it to the lens of no self nature, emptiness without getting distracted, without getting dullness.

Samten is a level of meditative concentration where there's no ability to be distracted from that process. It's not doing the process. It's the platform from which we can.

The third word is Nyom-juk, Sanskrit is samapatti.

Samapatti means balanced meditation.

Nyom-juk means causal meditation.

So one of those times when the Tibetan did not translate the word literally, but rather by way of the meaning that's trying to be conveyed.

A causal meditation means meditations that will cause rebirth.

All of our meditations are planting seeds, and if any of those seeds ripens as our projecting karma, they cause rebirth. But there are specific meditations and their platforms that are identified by way of the future life you're trying to create by doing it.

There are causal meditations that create rebirth in the form realms.

I don't know, if this is different than this, what they're calling Samten, or if it's a description of the same thing using a different word. But it's the same idea.

There are Nyom-juk meditations that create the causes for a form realm rebirth. There's a Nyom-juk meditation that will land us in a formless realm in future life.

Formless realm means a realm of existence where form is at its most minimal.

When we say formless, it's not no form at all, because form means some kind of existence. You can't have a formless realm, because there'd be no existence at all, and that's not possible. But in the formless realm, all that being experiences is a mental realm, movement of the mind. It takes a very, very subtle wind present for the mind to move. But that wind is so subtle that the whole realm is called formless, meaning like the least form ever makes formless realm.

The being’s experience is all mental.

So there's no physical pleasure or physical pain, but a mental experience is not necessarily all bliss, is it? We know our own minds. What if that's all we were left with, was this rattling on inside there?

It is not a pleasurable thing. It's not a thing to aspire to. It is still Sansaric, but it's not desire realm. We don't have formless realm in the desire realm, but it's all still suffering realm: desire realm, form realm, formless realm are all suffering realms.

There's a third Nyom-juk, this Nyom-juk is called cessation meditation.

Cessation meditation where you train yourself to almost shut your mind down. That's what the Huangshang was teaching.

It would be pleasurable to finally shut up in there, but their premise was if you could get to that, that would be Nirvana, because you wouldn't be having any mental afflictions, finally. But it doesn't last. Maybe it lasts a long time, but it's going to end and when it ends, we haven't done anything to identify the true nature of what was going on in the mind, and even the true nature of the experiencing the almost mind shut down. If we don't delve into the true nature we don't have any hope of stopping the perpetuation of sansara. Even while we're in it in a subtle, but then for sure when we come out of that meditation, it's going to start right back up again. So it's not Nirvana because we stopped the mantle afflictions, but we didn't stop the causes for more, which is part of what makes Nirvana nirvana—no more mental afflictions and no causes for more.

So Nyom-juk is not a real cessation cessation. It's not a real cessation meditation. It's just like you're in deep sleep sitting up, and it doesn't help much.

Let's take a break.

(1:09:30)

Next word is Shiney, Sanskrit is shamatha.

Shiney

Shi = the shi from Master Shivala—Peace angel. It means peace.

Ney = stay, like, Oh, those who've learned about the subtle body. There's the ney, the crucial point. It's that same word. So, peace stay, the crucial point of peace.

It's often translated as stillness shamatha—stillness.

It is a very still state, but stillness really gives the wrong connotation in English, because stillness seems to mean „not move at all“, and truly, physically you're not moving at all, of course, but it's not that your mind is still.

The Shiney—shamatha, it's said to be the highest evolution of meditation. It's what Geshe Michael says about it.

The highest evolution of meditation is this level of concentration called shamtaha, we'll learn more about it.

It's a very, very deeply focused and highly alert quality of mind focused on something. When what it's focused on is Hlaktong, that's considered the highest form of the highest form of concentration.

So the highest level of Shiney is to have Hlaktong turned onto.

Vipashyana is the Sanskrit word, which means insight.

Hlaktong = exceptional seeing.

When our Shiney state of mind is focused upon that emptiness of our object, we've reached Hlaktong.

We reach the emptiness of our object, sometimes in our imagination, sometimes still with conceptualization, and eventually we will actually reach Hlaktong or Vipashyana, which is that Shiney state of mind turned to the empty nature of the object and will be experiencing it directly—meaning without a conceptualizing of what's happening.

So, Hlaktong we say, Oh, that means the direct perception of emptiness.

It isn't the word for the direct perception, but it's this what we do with our Shiney state of mind to use it as a tool instead of to use our Shiney state of mind as our goal.

People say, I'm going to do a shamatha retreat so that I can reach shamatha. That would be useful, but if we think reaching shamatha is our goal and that that's all we have to do, we've only got part of the goal. We've just fine tuned our microscope with shamatha. Then we need to use it to Hlaktong our object of meditation to reach the exceptional seeing of the object of meditation.

We can't reach the direct perception of ultimate reality without first reaching Shiney or shamatha. But to just reach Shiney doesn't automatically put us into the direct perception. Shiney is a very pleasurable state, and so it wouldn't be surprising that we find ourselves in this Shiney or Shamatha, and it‘d be so pleasurable, I think you all just stay here and not make the effort to delve into the true nature.

We think, Oh, how could that be? But if we weren't well-trained, we wouldn't know any better. This is why we're learning all of this.

Shamatha can become a distraction because it's so pleasurable, when it's simply a tool, a necessary one, but a tool, not a goal, not a final goal.

Next is Ting-nge-dzin. It's spelled like this, but it said tingenzin. It's easier to say without looking at the spelling, in my opinion—Ting-nge-dzin.

Samadhi is the Sanskrit word, and also a common word that you hear people when they're meditating or meditators or in that circle talking about samadhi, Oh, they go into samadhi.

I studied with a teacher for a short while who apparently would go into samadhi at the drop of a hat. It happened once when he was riding his bike and it's like, that's kind of dangerous. I think he fell off his bike and fell out of samadhi. It's like samadhi is you're so focused on something that all your sensory perceptions are shut down. They're not shut down, you're not paying any attention to them.

So you can't very well ride a bike and not be paying attention to what you see and hear and feel, it's not going to work. He would go into samadhi if he was sitting in a chair, he would just freeze. We've heard stories like that. It isn't useful for it to happen uncontrolled. It's a stage that we'll use when we're cultivating our Shiney.

So Ting-nge-dzin is that quality of mind that we are all capable of, which is single pointed focus. It's the state of mind of the cat hunting the mouse. It's like all that's happening is its tail is twitching, or they say the hummingbird at the flower hour—so focused. Not paying attention to anything else.

We get it when we're watching a movie we really like. You don't hear the doorbell, you're just Ting-nge-dzin.

What we don't have is the ability to turn on our Ting-nge-dzin at will.

Yeah, a great book, a great movie. It's effortless to go into it, but you can't sit down with the newspaper and go into Ting-nge-dzin because you decide to. Learning to meditate well, you'll be able to turn your Ting-nge-dzin on and off, rather than relying upon the object absorbing you.

We have the capacity, we know because it happens sometimes.

But to have the power to turn it on and off is what comes from meditation.

It is not a goal in and of itself, but it's a benefit. People who concentrate really well are pretty efficient at their tasks. It's a useful tool.

Again, in terms of training our Ting-nge-dzin, there's an advantage to training our single pointed concentration by focusing on a powerful karmic object or on a virtuous object as opposed to training our single pointed focus of attention on a candle flame. Because we get the added benefit of a virtuous object of spending time with our mind focused on some virtue.

So there's not a difference in the Ting-nge-dzin, but there's a difference in the seed planting that we're doing while we're working on our single pointed concentration. That single pointed concentration work comes into play as we're working through the nine stages of meditation. I hope that it will come together.

Then the last word here for us tonight, not for class, but for this list, is Nyam shak jetop yeshe—4 words—Nyam shak jetop yeshe.

Jetop = the word for the aftermath, implying the aftermath from experiencing ultimate reality. In that aftermath, we experience what comes to be known as the for Arya truths.

Jetop Yeshe, I think we know that term, means this aftermath wisdom that comes to us in the next 12 to 24 hours they say.

Nyam shak = the term for highly tempered like steel, to make a metal knife sharp enough that it doesn't just get dull with one cutting of a tomato, it gets tempered. They heat it again and again and again. Really, really strong tempered, strong tempered state of mind, Nyam shak.

But here this whole term refers to the single pointed mental state in meditation in which you have the direct perception of emptiness and consequently the four Arya truth experience.

If we needed a word for that sequence of events—seeing emptiness directly and experiencing the four Arya truths—it would be Nyam shak jetop yeshe.

It happens in meditation, the Nyam shak part, and then the jetop yeshe part is out of meditation, but the whole term refers to the meditation in which that happens. Okay, got it.

6 Preliminaries

How do we learn to do it? Where do we start?

If this—Nyam shak jetop yeshe—is our aspiration, we can't just sit down and say, I'm going to meditate on seeing emptiness directly and the four Arya truths.

We could, but there's a process that we can go through that will help that be more effective.

We start that process with what are called the six preliminaries.

I'm giving you the Tibetan words in order to plant seeds in our minds to keep Tibetan alive in our world, because so many of the scriptures are available in Tibetan and not complete in other languages.

I don't know Tibetan. It's not my focus of attention. But if any of you have language seeds, then I encourage you to try to learn a little bit of Tibetan. If you learn a little bit, it plants the seeds to help Tibetan stay, and then who knows what can happen a few years from now. Maybe you're one of the translators.

Before your class, don't worry about the Tibetan, unless you want to.

So here they are.

6 preliminaries

Ne-kang tsang-ma
Chupa
Kyab-dro sem-kye
Tsok-shing mik-pa
Drip-jang tsok-sak
Solndeb

The six preliminaries, means what we need to do first, and repeatedly first, most of them.

1. Clean and tidy your room

Ne-kang tsang-ma

Presumably you have a designated place where you meditate.

It's sweet if it can be the same place regularly, because it'll build up familiarity, comfort. It just helps the ease of transition of your own mind, if you've got a little place where you're put your cushion and it can stay put.

I had friends who meditated in their clothes closet. Their altar was in there, little tiny altar on the floor, and they would just move the clothes to the side, sit down and close the door behind them. They could only do it one person at a time, but it's like all they had was their closed closet.

So you don't need your whole room, just a corner where you say to your family, Let's just leave this just for meditating and we won't do anything else there. To the extent that you can. Don't not learn to meditate because you can't have a corner of your own. But if you can, be creative.

What we do each day, each before session is you clean it up and tidy it up. And it's like, Well wait. I just tidied it up. I never use it for anything else. It's not dirty.

Well, it's for our own mind's purpose to dust it a little, straighten it a little, make it nice because you're inviting somebody special to come visit you.

We think, Oh, not really. But no, really. You could have this state of mind, Yeah, I'm cleaning up because somebody special's going to come see me.

But in the back of your mind going, Not.

What happens when they show up?

Oh my gosh, I'm in my underwear. Oh my gosh, my altar is so dirty. Oh my gosh…

Rather, recognize that they do actually come every time you sit there and call them forth, they're there. They don't really care whether your space is clean, do they?

But if somebody special shows up at your house unannounced and your dishes aren't done, I only just got over that. I don't care if my dishes are done or not.

But if it's Holiness the Dalai Lama came, Oh, I would be embarrassed. Like that, clean and tidy your space no matter what. But just quickly, don't spend all day cleaning your space every day. It's your state of mind: Someone special's coming.

2. Make Offerings

Chupy = Offerings

Set some offerings out in front of your little meditation space.

We'll learn the traditional offering bowls and how to do it according to the ritual.

But again, the purpose here is you're going to sit down and invite somebody special to come. And when they come, we would naturally, Oh here, oh, here for you. Put a flower, put a glass of water, make a cup of tea, pretend it stays hot.

Just something that would say to your own mind. I've gone to a little bit of trouble, effort, not trouble, effort to put this out for this precious being that I'm going to talk to in my mind, or I'm going to call for.

3. Refuge & Bodhichitta

Kyab-dro sem-kye

This means go for refuge and generate Bodhichitta.

It's one of the six, but it's got these two aspects to it because we're in the Mahayana tradition. You don't ever just go for refuge, you go for refuge and Bodhichitta, grow your wish.

4. Visualize the Field of Gathering (Lineage Lamas)

Tsok-shing mik-pa = to visualize, the words are field, the field of gathering, visualize the field of gathering. But what it means is to visualize the Lamas of the two great lineages.

The two great lineages here means the lineage, the line of teachers whose main practice was wisdom, and the line of teachers whose main practice was merit method side. Wisdom side and method side.

Of course, there isn't a division between the two.

Anyone whose focus is on wisdom has to practice the method side to get the goodness to be successful.

Anyone who's practicing the method side needs the wisdom for the method to be method.

But some are more concentrated on the wisdom and some are more concentrated on the method. From the deities, Manjushri focuses on wisdom, Chenrezig focuses on method—that kind of idea.

There'll be these detailed descriptions of how to visualize whom and where, and if you're inclined to that kind of elaboration, it's really useful to grow a mental image of all these special beings and why they're there with you.

I couldn't do that for the life of me.

Geshe Michael would say, Just roll them all into your own Lama.

I use that term, that being who is ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, so you get to decide who that is.

My experience through learning was, Oh, I got more familiar with first Panchen Lama Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen. Then all of a sudden when I was sitting down to meditate, it was like boom, he was there too. Then more familiar with Choney Lama, there he was too, right?

It wasn't sitting down to make them show up. It's just as I developed a relationship with them through my study, it was like bing, there they'd be.

So either method, the point is at the beginning of our meditation session and at the beginning of our career, we bring to mind these holy, precious beings and set them there in front of us, because they show up just by way of our thinking of them.

So we'll learn the details of each of these in another class.

5. Purify Obstacles & Gather Goodness

Drip-jang tsok-sak = purify and gather goodness

Drip-jang = to purify obstacle

tsok-sak = to gather goodness

That gets taught in a method that has seven steps called the 7 limbs or the 7 ingredients. We'll learn those, you know them already, most of you, as those, we call them the 7 preliminaries. But they're the preliminaries of your given meditation session, and it's actually they make up the fifth of the overall preliminaries.

It's in this Drip-jang tsok-sak that we are consciously and intentionally planting certain seeds and purifying specific seeds and planting new ones in place. So that these seven limb preliminaries, they say never do a meditation without doing them. Although we know about planting seeds, you don't plant the seeds and then 20 minutes later ripen those seeds as a good meditation session.

But you plant those seeds every day, every day, every day, every day. They're going to build up to at some point the meditation session does actually start to get good. Not from that day's preliminaries, but from all the days previous preliminaries, because all those seeds have been adding to each other.

Finally we get to a place where they just keep adding. They're adding so fast that our meditation finally does actually start to have some progress.

Then what we do in our non-meditation time of course, affects all those seeds, doesn't it? So we can still have not so great meditation days, even not so great meditation weeks, like through the holidays. But you regroup, start the process again, and seeds get added to seeds, and it gets easier each time you get back.

6. Request Blessings

Solndeb = requesting blessings

This is an odd one that the literature will say, Ask your holy being to bless your mind with such and such. Ask them to stay close. Ask them to not go to Nirvana until everybody's enlightened. Ask them for all this cool stuff, which if they could give us any of that stuff, that fully enlightened being’s compassion would've made them do it before we even asked. So what's up with these blessing things?

If they can't give it to us, why do we ask?

Can they not give it to us?

There are people who have said, Bless me with such and such, and their Lama just waxs 'em on the head and boom.

It doesn't happen in the way that we ignorantly think it could happen or hope it can happen or expect it to happen. But it can happen, and it won't happen if we don't plant the seeds for it to happen. Truly, the seeds would be blessing somebody else, which if you've ever asked somebody, What would you like for your birthday? And they say, I'd like a dozen roses, and you've got them a dozen roses, then you did bless somebody with something they asked for, right?

No. But yeah, we have the seeds to receive blessings if we've ever carried out something for someone else that they would feel good about getting, which all of us do all the time.

But our own minds need to see here ourselves honoring this being, believing they have something that we don't have that could benefit us in asking, Please help me in that way. So it is an important piece. It's often, Please stay, please teach. Okay, let's get on with it. But when we understand the seed planting, it's useful to take a little bit of time with this one.

These are the six preliminaries.

Clean and tidy the room
Set up your altar & make offerings
Sit down, go for Refuge & Bodhichitta

I didn't say it, but when you go for refuge and grow your Bodhichitta, you're already on your cushion. So you sit down on your cushion, go for refuge, generate your Bodhichitta.

Visualize the Lamas of the two great lineages
Purify obstacles and gather goodness through the seven limb ingredients, and
Request blessings from the holy beings.

Those are the preliminaries, but we're not done.

We're going to learn how to dedicate, we're going to learn how to then shift into the actual meditation session.

There's this process of getting yourself ready to focus on your meditation object.

But what I have found is that using the Drip-jang tsok-sak, the cleaning out obstacles and gathering goodness, that's a series of things that we do in our visualization that itself can be a powerful meditation.

As we learn that, we'll actually use it as our meditation object.

We'll learn

how to recognize when we get distracted,
how to recognize when we get dull,
how to correct ourselves and come back.

But as we're learning to apply ourselves to these seven limbs, which I think you've all been meditating through this system for a while, you already know them.

Maybe use these days for your class time meditations to pay more attention to the quality of your attention as you're doing your meditation preliminaries. Because you don't have to spend the time learning them.

Let's use them to say, Are you going through them on automatic pilot?

Are you going through them with this keen belief that the person, the being's right there?

Are you so keen that they're there, that you're nervous about it?

Just note, just make note so that when we start talking about these different obstacle states of mind, you'll go, Oh, I have that one when I'm doing my preliminaries. Or I recognize that one. That's what I hope to achieve in our post session, is that you'll be able to recognize dullness and subtle dullness more clearly, and agitation and subtle agitation more clearly by way of experience.

That completes class one. You have what you need for your homework. It says memorize the six preliminaries. It just means learn them.

What do I do?

I clean and tidy my room. I put out the offerings. I go for refuge and grow my Bodhichitta. I visualize the Lamas. I purify and gather goodness with the seven limbs, and I ask for blessings.

Then it says, meditate on the six preliminaries. Again, that just means what does it mean to clean and tidy the room? Why am I doing that?

Because somebody special is coming.

Why am I putting out an offering? Somebody special is coming, I want to please them. That's all.

Then, at the beginning of next class, we'll do the review by way of the quiz as we've been doing, and then start into the details of the six preliminaries. Okay?

Any questions, concerns, needs? Good. Then I get 10 minutes credit or some other

Q&A

Lian Sang: I'm trying to put Samten, Dhyana, Samadhi and Ting-nge-dzin, which is this shamatha together. Maybe in terms of progress or steps, are there relationship between the three?

Lama Sarahni: No, the Ting-nge-dzin, the single point in concentration at will, that we could say is a progression. We have to be able to have that in order to find ourselves at the level called or shamatha or shiney. We need to be at that level in order to turn our minds to the emptiness of our object. So, you could say you have to cultivate the Ting-nge-dzin in order to reach shiney, but it's not that when you reach shiney your Ting-nge-dzin goes away, right? It's the basis upon which your shiney stays, is that Ting-nge-dzin. So it is not really going from one to the next to the next. It's these different qualities or abilities to hold the mind that are all coming into play that get these names. Ting-nge-dzin, shiney, nyam shak jetop yeshe.

Lian Sang: I am trying to understand. So samadhi…, because we are also studying the other one, the yoga from Geshe Michael as well, they talk about samadhi as the final state, right? But we know that it's not the final state, but could we actually say that shiney is a higher form of Ting-nge-dzin or samadhi, meaning the samadhi can have many, many types.

So shamatha brings, it is a very specific type, and it allows us to move on to Vipashyana?

Lama Sarahni: Yes. For the quality of attention of Ting-nge-dzin to become shamatha, there needs to be this additional qualities called the Xinjiangs[?] that arise. So Ting-nge-dzin, let's just say for example, the Ting-nge-dzin focus is like a raw, plain experience. The more it intensifies, the intensity of mind, the more the winds and mind line up, and the more pleasurable it becomes. Pleasurable in the sense of easy and automatic and in the flow and being in the zone.

Your state of mind gets into the zone of Ting-nge-dzin. It's got this physical, pleasure isn't the right word, ease, practiced ease, and then a mental practiced ease. And when you've got those two practiced eases from the platform of the Ting-nge-dzin alone, that's called shamatha.

Lian Sang: Okay. So am I correct to say that samadhi or Ting-nge-dzin that's not necessarily have both mental and physical ease?

Lama Sarahni: Correct. It doesn't

Lian Sang: Not necessary, right?

Lama Sarahni: Right.

Lian Sang: And how do I relate to the dhyana, the word dhyana, which is the fifth perfection. You said that even more generic word, which could include… because dhyana and samadhi, again is different word. So typically it is dhyana that leads on to samadhi. Am I right? Which is like you could have that form realm, formless realm focus, but it may not be samadhi. It hasn't reached samadhi yet.

Lama Sarahni: Well, but the samten, using that term to mean the perfection of concentration, that would have the quality of Ting-nge-dzin, single pointed focus on what you know to now be true.

Because that Samten perfection of meditation, you don't have until after you've seen emptiness directly.

And then it's a state of mind that's not only on your meditation cushion.

Of course it comes back on your meditation cushion, but you don't automatically go back into the direct perception of emptiness every time you meditate, once you've done it once. Yet your meditations are called samten, the perfection of meditation. Because now, as you meditate, that it appears to have its own nature, but it doesn't. That's what samten means in the perfection of meditation.

Different than the samten that causes a samten level, a form level.

Lian Sang: Okay. Okay. So if it's a samten level, then that should be before samadhi, before the Ting-nge-dzin, before I get into the.. No?

Lama Sarahni: No, because in order for your seed planting in that meditation where you're trying to blank your mind out, that you need to be single pointed focused on the mind blanked out

Lian Sang: In order to reach even the first level.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. So it may be that it's getting the name samten depending on what we do with it, right? In the practice with it. But I think you don't reach samten until after your Ting-nge-dzin is ninth level, meaning effortless, predetermined, effortless, how long I'm going to stay in it.

Lian Sang: I see. Okay. So we use Ting-nge-dzin a very generic word from the very, very low level of Ting-nge-dzin, meaning that I have it on, off, on, off, that is that moment on is still Ting-nge-dzin until I reach a very high level of Ting-nge-dzin.

Lama Sarahni: Right.

Lian Sang: Okay. So in the sense, I'm trying to make it understand the relationship between the terms and the progression.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah.

And we'll do a whole class in that.

Lian Sang: Okay. Thank you so much.

I'm happy to use up my extra 10 minutes that way. Now I have two.

Usual closing

Remember that person we wanted to be able to help, but believe it or not, we have learned stuff that we will use to help them in that deep and ultimate way.

That's an extraordinary goodness, so please be happy with yourself and think of this goodness as a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands.

Recall your own precious, holy being.

See how happy they are with you.

Grow your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them.

Ask them to please, please stay close, to continue to guide you and inspire you.

And then offer them this gemstone of goodness.

See them accept it and bless it, and they carry it with them right back into your heart.

See them there. Feel them there. Their love, their compassion, their wisdom.

It feels so good, we want to keep it forever and so we know to share it:

By the power of the goodness that we've just done

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make.

So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person.

To share it with everyone you love.

To share it with every being everywhere.

See them all filled with this loving kindness, so strong in them that they want to share it with others.

May it be so.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to share. Show me your homeworks before next class.

Class 2: The Seven Ingredients

7 Janary 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Class 2

For the recording, this is ACI course 3, class 2. It's January 7th, 2024.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please.

[Usual opening]

Review class 2

Last class, we learned about the five parts of our practice of meditation that this course is going to teach us. Who I'd like to give me the first two of those?

Clare: The first one is preparing for the meditation and the second one is six conditions of the physical space where we're meditating.

Lama Sarahni: Perfect, thank you. How about three and four? Natalia, you had your hand up?

Natalia: So the third one is about the correct posture and the fourth one is the mental processes during the meditation.

Lama Sarahni: Excellent, thank you. And then the fifth one is the object of meditation. We will get there.

Then we also learned last week about just the list of the six preliminaries. We'll learn the details tonight. So who can give me the first two of those six?

Monica: Clean and tidy your space and setting up an altar. And the next one is making offerings

Lama Sarahni: Beautiful. Who can give us three and four?

Siau-Cheng: The third one is the posture and the fourth one is the visualization of the merit.

Lama Sarahni: So you don't ever go for refuge and generate your pot?

Siau-Cheng: Yes, we need to.

Lama Sarahni: Where does that happen? That must happen in number?

Siau-Cheng: Oh, sorry. It should be the third one.

Lama Sarahni: Good.

Lama Sarahni: Okay, so three and four, and five and six?

Joana: We are rejoicing in the good things that we've done or seen that others have been done and then we purify. It's the fifth step, and the last one is asking for blessings from our teachers.

Lama Sarahni: Okay, asking for blessings is number six. What you described as number five is only a small part of number five are purify obstacles and gather goodness. But what that means is doing those seven steps that lead to doing the purification and the rejoicing. Okay, good. Nice.

These preliminaries have been taught by beings who use them to reach their own progress along their path all the way to Buddhahood, this lineage teaches. We can learn them and practice them, but really we want to test them out, try them on for size so that we can confirm that they're worth doing.

We're not being told do this because Buddha said so. It is a good reason to do it. But if we're doing something just because someone we have faith in tells us to do so, it's very likely that when things get difficult, our faith breaks, and then that leaves us kind of spinning.

Whereas if we receive these kinds of teachings, we're encouraged to think about them and check them out, and compare them to our experience, and really try to put them into practice for a period of time, and watch what happens. We can come to, what's the word, corroborate, what we've been taught actually works for us.

If we can confirm something that these beings are saying is beneficial to do that we can't directly see yet is beneficial or necessary, and then we get some experience that shows, Oh, I see. It really does make a difference.

When we get other teachings from that being or these lineages that we struggle to confirm, we are more likely to be able to stay with the struggle, instead of just ditch it.

We're early on in our ACI career, although you guys are sophisticated, but I still encourage us to not just say, Oh yeah, yeah, I know that already. Or to say, oh yeah, yeah, I'll do that because they're teaching it. But really check it out.

If you're finding that they're not helping you, then let's talk about it. Because either we're misunderstanding it in some way, or it really isn't seeds ripening for your progress. Which doesn't mean good or bad, it just means let's find another avenue.

The Six Preliminaries in more detail

We are learning the preliminaries, we're learning what will be useful to know as we're growing our meditation career so that we can get off to a good start—is the idea.

Tonight's class comes partly from Pabongka Rinpoche‘s „Liberation in the palm of our Hand“. His text goes into great detail about the meditation preliminaries, almost too much detail for a class like this.

Them Lam Rim Chenmo, our other text, doesn't go into much detail. Which is why Pabongka Rinpoche did, but Je Tsongkapa‘s Lam Rim Chenmo goes into greater detail about various meditation practices—so Pabongka Rinpoche doesn't go into that because it had already been done.

We're using the Lam Rim Chenmo explanation of these preliminaries and that Lam Rim Chenmo is a commentary on the prayer of Samantabhadra, which came from a combination of various sutras.

We're at the six preliminaries, we already know the six, but we're going to learn a little bit more detail about them.

Preliminary 1: Clean and Tidy your Space

We said before it's because you're going to invite somebody special to come visit you, and so you want your space nice for them. That's like a no-brainer if they were showing up physically.

But I peak and they're not there. But that doesn't mean they're not there. Technically, the extent to which we think about these enlightened beings is the extent to which they are here with us. They're just not in a form that our seeds allow us to see with our eyes or here with our ears necessarily. It doesn't mean that can't be someday.

But they're omniscient. They're made of love and compassion. So if we think of them, they have to be there with you.

So do you want to be in your pajamas with messy hair? They don't care of course. But when you're the Buddha and somebody calls to you, are you going to want them to just be in their pajamas? I don't know. It doesn't really matter, does it?

But it's our own mind we're dealing with.

We clean up our space not only for that reason, but in cleaning up our space we're saying to ourselves, This is my special place. This is my sacred space, actually. And there's nothing about that corner of your room that's more or less sacred than any other corner of your room, except by way of how we behave and interact and use that space.

You can take any old space and do something with it to make it a holy place.

Then what you do in that holy place, the power of those deeds increases.

There's an art to taking a space and setting it up into a sacred space, and then doing sacred stuff there, and then taking it apart and letting it be ordinary again for the next group that's coming in.

Venerable Kading, she's in charge of doing that at Diamond Mountain. She's an expert. But you can do it in your own little space. To clean it a little bit each day confirms in our own mind, That this is this little space that I'm making sacred and every day I'm going to reconfirm, reestablish it as my sacred space. So clean it up a little bit.

Orderliness in our outer environment reflects and is a reflection of, did I get that right? It shows the orderliness of our mind in the outside and it reinforces the orderliness of our mind. So it becomes this upward cycle to tidy our place, especially if we tend to not be the tidy type.

I try to be tidy and when I tidy something up and I look at it, it still looks messy to me. Whereas there I know people where their place looks immaculate and they go, oh, my place is such a mess. Because we know it's all coming from our seeds, but so our effort to be a little more tidy than we ordinarily would be plants the seeds in our minds for our Buddha paradise.

Who would put that together? I clean my room, my little space every day to create my Buddha paradise? Oh, now I'll do it, because if that's all I have to do—it's not all we have to do, but it helps. Now we're a little bit more motivated to clean up. All right, so we clean up.

Preliminary 2: Set up the Altar and Make Offerings

I remember saying there's the traditional kind of altar upon which you place all these items, all significant for seeds that we're planting in our minds that will go on to help us create our Buddha paradise, meet Buddhas directly, become one of them—in this place that we're establishing as holy, we set up these items.

But I also said that one single flower will do the job.

One single water bowl will do the job.

Totally depends on the practitioner and their circumstance.

Why not learn the traditional and maybe try it on for size for a little while, and then adjust it if one wishes to make it more personalized if we need.

The traditional altar, again, has evolved over all this time to be what works for people.

If you like to reinvent the wheel, have at it.

If you're okay with not reinventing the wheel, well then follow the recipe.

Venerable Sumati, he can't follow a recipe for the life of him, and his stuff always comes out great. But our friend Connie, a professional chef, she would say, Always make it according to the recipe the first time, and then you can adjust it all you want. And he would still go… and do what he wants.

I suggest we not do that with our altar, but learn the fill up first, and then adjust it according to your circumstance and what moves you. That's the point, is for what we put onto our altar to be the portal to our connection to these holy beings.

I have to admit, many days when I'm setting up my altar, I'm thinking about half a dozen other things and it's no more a portal than my toothbrush.

But it's because of my own state of mind, not the holy beings and not my altar, right?

1. Water Bowls (+ audio)

Traditionally on an altar is a set of seven offering bowls, often called water bowls.

There are seven different substances that we offer our guests to bring pleasure to their senses.

So they'll be visual, they'll be auditory, there'll be fragrance, there'll be taste, there'll be touch, there's a couple of visuals, a couple of noses.

Then, technically the audio is a separate offering. It can be an extra water bowl, so an eighth one. But usually what's placed on the altar for the offering of sound is music: a bell, Geshe Michael says your favorite CD can go there. But something for music.

2. Image of a Holy Being - physical body of a Buddha

Then you also have an image of the holy being. So for a sutra, an open teaching alter, that's typically Shakyamuni Buddha. It could be Je Tsongkapa, it could be your own heart teacher, your own Heart Sutra teacher. But typically it's a Shakyamuni Buddha: a statue, a painting, an image—something that represents the physicalness of an enlightened being, the body of an enlightened being.

3. Dharma text - speech of a Buddha

Then you have something that represents the speech of an enlightened being.

That is usually a text. In our Tibetan tradition, it's one of those pechas, it's long and narrow and you just set it. I set mine behind my statue of Lord Buddha.

I have several. I have a Diamond Cutter Sutra—I'm looking at 'em to think, what's there—, a Diamond Cutter Sutra, a Heart Sutra and something else. It looks like there's three there. But it could be the little preparing for Tantra book.

It could be Geshe Michael's Karma of Love book, anything that represents the teachings.

You have something like that on your altar as well, representing enlightened speech.

4. Stupa - mind of a Buddha

Then we have something representing enlightened mind, and it's like, How do you put that on an altar? That's what stupas are meant to be. They represent the enlightened mind. They actually include body, speech and mind.

But to have a stupa on your altar is the physical representation of reaching and being omniscient. An image, a text, and a stupa are the three characteristic items on one's alter and then the offering bowls that go with it.

When you see a traditional Tibetan altar, there's a whole lot more stuff on there than that. It‘s because they almost always also have their tantric deity there. For tantric deities, you make more offering bowls than just one.

Then you have Tomas, which are those little cakes with those fancy designs on them. It just keeps building and building, but that's not necessary.

General advices

Traditionally, it's the seven offering bowls with a bell, an image, a text, and a stupa.

All of those can be teeny little things. It doesn't have to take up a lot of space.

Or you can have a big old altar and make it really elaborate. The point is not how elaborate and how big and how fancy your altar, but how inspired you are by what's on there when you see it.

Ideally your altar is maybe in a place where it's not like in your living room, you're coming across it all the time, but it is somewhere in your bedroom or your den and you walk by it half a dozen times a day and don't even notice it. And then one time it actually catches your eye and does what you have on it make you go, Oh yeah.

I have one image that does that for me. Technically that's all that should be on my altar is that one image. So I don't forget.

But start with the whole thing because having each of those items on our altar is planting seeds that we don't quite understand yet. I'm not actually going to tell you about it yet, but they're deeper seeds than what we learn at this place in our practice.

How to fill the offering bowls?

When we put out the offering bowls, there's a method just to putting away and putting out the offerings in our offering bowls that has been developed by way of doing so in order to plant certain seeds in our minds that help us stay close to the Dharma, keep the Dharma wheel turning—meaning continuing to receive teachings—,keep the teachers close, and then make these actual offerings of the sensory objects to the Buddha.

There's a sequence of doing so that represents all of that.

Then a sequence for taking them down at night to put them away before you go to bed.

They say it's wise to put your alter down at night because it signifies that you know are going to die. You don't want to leave your place unattended to. I heard that and it was like, Wait, that doesn't make sense, but that's the tradition.

So I did it for many years. I turned it down and then just not by any kind of instruction, I just thought, Yeah, but what if the Buddhas actually come for me in the middle of the night and then my offerings aren't there? I can't have that. So I leave them up all night now. Then in the morning I take them down and put them right back up again.

But that's like Sarahni‘s tradition. Don't follow that until it occurs to you, Wait, wait, wait. I don't want 'em to show up when my offerings aren't there. So my offerings aren't ever not there, are never not there just in case.

I'm going to describe how you do the water bowls and then I'm going to turn my computer down so my camera is on my desk and I'm going to show you. So you'll have it on the recording and then you can match what I say now to what I say later as I'm showing you. Okay.

(33:05)

You have these seven little water bowls and the traditional ones are made of brass. The cool thing about them is they have a really narrow lip, which means when you pour water from one to the next, they pour really nicely and don't drip.

I had some ceramic ones that were really pretty, but their lip was fat and every time I poured it—big mess. These are brass, probably. You can get 'em in stainless steel and chrome and gold and silver and I don't know, numyack steel, but brass is common.

But I have another set that are just teriyaki bowls dishes, and they work really well. They're little plastic things. You don't have to go the Tibetan store. Do whatever you want for your seven offering bowls.

When you leave them overnight, you stack them in a certain way.

Then when you go to fill them, you unstack them in a certain way.

When you unstack them, the first thing you do is, well, I'm going to show you later. You take the first unstacked bowl, and you light some incense and you clear it with Om Ah Hung. Om Ah Hung means body, speech, mind Buddha, and it makes any negative energy that's come around your space just go flying away.

So, you clear them and then you set them upside down along your altar.

So you'll have all seven bowls upside down, having cleared that space.

Then you'll take the first bowl, fill it almost to the brim with water, pick up the second bowl and pour from the first bowl into the second bowl almost all of it, but not all of it.

Then you set the first bowl down.

You then take the third bowl, pour from the second bowl into the third bowl, almost all of it. Set the second bowl down. Pick up the fourth bowl.

Are you following me?

Third one into the fourth one, almost all of it. Set the third bowl down, five to seven.

Now you have seven water bowls. The last one actually has the most water in it by now, but none of them are full. Now they're ready to actually receive your offering and you take your pitcher or whatever, and you start at the first bowl and you fill that first bowl like almost to full. So close to full, that one more drop and the whole thing would spill then.

As you're filling that bowl, you're thinking,

Oh, this is water to drink for my holy being who's coming,

exactly already there.

Then fill the second bowl.

This is water to wash their feet.

Third bowl,

This is beautiful flowers.

Fourth, This is fragrant incense.

Fifth bowl, Lamps of light.

Sixth, perfume lotions. It can be perfume. Well, perfume lotions.

Then the sixth, seventh bowl is delicious food.

But wait, it all looks like water. It's all just water. Right.

If we offer water, there's no reason not to make offerings. We can always get not even a pint of water to do seven offering bowls.

In our perceived world, we're coming up with a shortage of water. Maybe making lots of water offerings might be a good idea?

So they can all be water because it costs almost nothing. We can get it. Understanding emptiness and dependent origination: Looks like water to me. My intention is for it to be this kind of pleasure for the holy being, who's the omniscient, who's going to get all of those pleasures. And it doesn't matter whether it looks like water to me or a beautiful cherry pie, they get bliss from it.

That's really what we're offering, is the pleasure that they receive.

Well, now they'd get pleasure if you put out dog poop?

But that's not our tradition to put out dog poop for people who come to visit. So, although it doesn't really matter to the enlightened being, it kind of matters to our own mind because I don't want my friends to offering me dog poop.

Water does the job.

When you set your offering bowls down together, you want one bowl almost touching the next bowl, they say separated by the width of a grain of rice. I try to go even smaller than that because that represents staying close to our teachers. I don't know, I just like to jam them all together. I do that sometimes because I want to be that close to my teachers.

But traditionally the width of the grain of rice.

Just popped into my mind: As a general rule, when you're setting anything on your altar, there's a moment where the offering bowl is empty and you never want an empty something sitting on your altar. So you would always put it upside down until you're ready to fill it. When you pick up the upside down offering bowl, you hold it until you've got water in it before you set it back down.

Now there's also the tradition that people like to do a putting actual substances in their offering bowls. To do that, what we generally use is some kind of grain in the bowl. Usually it's rice, but it could be any grain.

You would still clear the rice or clear the bowl and set it upside down until you have your rice ready. Then you would put your rice on the bowl, and then you stick your incense pieces in there, so that represents the incense offering. It can stay there. You don't have to light it, but you have your incense sticking in the rice, and it can stay there all day, or I have to admit my incense stick offering bowl has probably been there for over a year, but it looks cute.

A candle, same. The perfume lotion, you can have the rice with a little bottle of perfume on.

Your food offering. It can be a cookie or a candy bar that's in a wrapper. That's okay. But I have to admit, it's being a bit lazy to leave those there, and just think about them newly, freshly every day. When that's the case, it's only the two water to drink and water to wash that you're replacing every day. It is kind of a shortcut, I admit.

But I encourage you not to use the shortcut until you've gotten fluent in doing the water bowls all with water, and then you're welcome to adjust.

Lisa, you had your hand up a long time. Thanks for being patient.

Luisa: Thanks, Lama. Just two questions. The first one, the way that we put the bowls, I remember one time they explained as you have to go right to left and then left to right or something like that, but I don't remember exactly. And the other is when we go travel, then we should not leave the bowls with water. Like what you say before. I also do that. I leave the bowls filled, but it's more out of, I don't know, my day doesn't give me the space to remove them at night. So in the morning I remove them and then fill them again. But if I go for a travel, then it's not okay to leave the water there?

Lama Sarahni: No, turn them down if you're going to travel. Yeah.

Luisa: Okay. And then the order of filling, right to left?

Lama Sarahni: Let me show.

So when your water offering bowls are put down, this is what it will look like for a sutra alter. It looks like a little caterpillar. The bowl that's all the way turned upside down. This is my left hand,

I'm kind of dyslexic, so this gets all mixed up for me. So now, what we're going to do, you will light your incense. You pick up the end of the caterpillar, you pick up your bowl, and you take your incense counter-clockwise three times as you say: Om Ah Hung, Om Ah Hung, Om Ah Hung.

Now, sometimes people do clockwise, counterclockwise. Clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise. Sometimes people do counterclockwise, clockwise, counterclockwise. Sutra teaching just says, go counterclockwise with your left hand on purpose, not because I am left-handed, incense in the left, bowl in the right, Om Ah Hung, Om Ah Hung, Om Ah Hung.

Then set your bowl down far enough away so that you have the space for all seven of them to line up.

I am running out of space...

Then I put my incense stick in my incense box.

Then we take our pitcher or jar. I use a pint, mason jar works very well.

You pick up the bowl, that was the one that was already turned upside down.

Not the caterpillar, but the head of the caterpillar. You pick up with your left hand, turn it, and pour water into it until it's almost full, and set your pitcher down. So I'm not going to do the water because it's going to make a mess.

Then I take the second bowl, pour almost all of the first bowl into the second bowl.

So now this one's almost full. There's a little bit here. And I set this one down.

This first bowl represents the Guru, represents Buddha.

Pouring from one bowl to the next, to the next represents the Buddha turning the wheel of the Dharma. So this one's almost full. I pick up the third bowl, pour from second into the third, leaving some in second, and then set it down next to the Guru bowl. Pick up the next one pore.

This one has only a little bit, this one half full by now.

(48:54)

So notice, I'm switching hands from which pours and which picks up.

Now we would have a little bit, a little bit, a little bit the most here, but this is still our Guru bowl. So now we take our jar full of precious nectar water, and we start at the Lama bowl, and as we're pouring it in, I'm offering them water to drink, pure fresh water, delicious water to drink, water to wash, beautiful flowers, sweetest fragrant incense. You just say it out loud or in your mind, lamps of light, perfume, lotions, delicious food. Then if you have a bell, ring the bell, or la la, la—you can sing. And you have your traditional offerings out there.

Now, when we get to the part in our preliminaries where we're making offerings, that's when you can again go, Oh, I offer you water to drink, et cetera. Or because you've already done it, you can offer other stuff.

Now, when you go to put them down, you go in the order that allows you to be left with the caterpillar, which means you start again from the Guru bowl and you pour it into your leftover container, turn it upside down.

Second one, pour it out, and it gets propped on the Guru bowl.

Third one, pour it out, prop it, pour it out.

See how easy that is?

They're all ready for the next day.

Tom: So do you leave that on if you leave the house or as long as you're home, you keep it?

Lama Sarahni: No. If you're going to leave the house, you can leave them there. It's just at night, when the day is done, is when they recommend that you turn it down. But if you're going to go away for the weekend, as Luisa pointed out, then you put it all away. Put it down.

Natasha: They will be wet on the altar, still dripping. Do we wipe them?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. I have a designated wiper cloth that I wipe them before I stack them.

Natasha: And they stay stacked on the altar?

Lama Sarahni: And they stay stacked on the altar.

Natasha: Thank you.

Rachana: Sorry for the dumb question, but because you said to put the incense back in the box. Do we light the incense when we do the…

Lama Sarahni: I meant the incense box. I have a box that the lit incense lays in the box as opposed to standing it up on something and the ash goes everywhere. So that's what I meant by the box, not back in the box that it came out of because it's been lit. It is lit. Once you light an incense, it's inauspicious to light it and use it again. Let it burn out.

Rachana: And then, I'm sorry, another dumb question. I'm assuming that you're using fresh water every single day. You don't have a jar that you're reusing, it's fresh water?

Lama Sarahni: Well, I do have a jar, but when I pour the bowls out, it goes into a different jar. So the jar that's waiting to be water offering is different than the jar that receives the already offered offering—different.

Which speaking of that, the water from your offering bowls is sacred stuff. They say, Don't pour that water in places where people are going to walk. Not just human people, but any people. You don't just put it on the ground, and they say you don't put it in the sewer either. Although I think it'd be a good idea to bless the sewer with sacred water, but they say don't do that.

But, it is auspicious to put it in the ocean or a river or a lake—f you have access to one. It's also auspicious to drink it, or bathe in it, or feed it to your pet, or water your potted plants with it. Nobody's going to walk in your potted plant. So you can use it as sacred stuff. Don't disrespect it. It's like it's not spent, it's infused. It is special in that way.

Luisa: The incense, is there a way to, or is it bad if we don't use the incense? I have an issue with the smell. I mean, not me, but my family. So then I will create a problem.

Lama Sarahni: Don't light it, right? Don't light your incense, but use your incense

Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah Ants. Do the ants get into your place and into your altar?

Tom: Sometimes. I have plants around it, so sometimes—Florida, temperature change, we have some stuff coming in. So I don't want to kill them. I do my best to pick them up and move them outside. Could you also elaborate? You were saying that your hands were changing when you were doing the water bowls?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. Okay, so let me do that first. Our tendency is to want to hold the bowl. I dunno, my tendency is to hold the bowl with my dominant hand and pour with my non-dominant hand. And then I want to set this one down to pick the other one up and pour, right? I suppose you could do that, but if you just allow yourself to pick up the next bowl with whichever hand is free, then you're doing this with your water bowls and it's just more smooth as you're making the offering. Then you're not setting down a partial bowl. I was taught to just go from one to the next, to the next, and it was awkward at first, but now it's natural.

I think with the ant thing, or any bug, at some point we don't have any control over whether anybody's actually going to walk over our offerings or our spent flowers, or any of that. So to the best of our ability, we're putting our sacred stuff in a place that we're trying to be safe and sacred. And if somebody does end up coming in contact with it, think, Wow, they're getting blessed and they're going to be one of my students someday as a result. Good. So that you don't go nuts with what to do with your sacred things.

Technically that would mean you could do that with everybody and then you would want everybody to walk across your sacred offerings because you're getting connection and it's just like, don't go that far. But it's okay if ants touch your sacred offerings.

Luisa: The order… because we were watching and then you were in the inverted.

So it is when you put the Lama bowl or the one that is the head of the caterpillar, would be on the left?

Lama Sarahni:

The head of the caterpillar would be in front of you, right in front of your left shoulder, and then all the rest go towards you, the center uppers right—for sutra.

Luisa: Okay, so from left to right. Okay, thank you.

Lama Sarahni: Yes, your left to right.

All right, let's take a break.

(59:27-62:52)

All of this qualifies as ritual and some people relate to ritual, will like ritual. Others of us think ritual is stupid. It's like for people who don't understand and who people are operating on just blind faith.

It is empty of being either one of those. Ritual is a tool for planting seeds in our minds in ways that we don't yet understand how to figure it out for ourselves.

There are deeper meanings of each of those offerings.

Deeper meanings of the image of the Buddha and the text and the stupa that just by placing them on our altar, offering them to the holy beings, the seeds for the deeper meanings are still being planted enough to where they will grow into someday receiving the teachings about the deeper meanings.

We've heard Geshe Michael say, Just follow the program because it's designed for our success, but we're like kids. You tell me what I have to do? I'm going to resist. Tell me why I have to do it, then maybe.

This tradition has that similar. The beauty of the ACI courses and others is it teaches us why, so that we can figure it out ourselves, so that we can apply ourselves. Because we're not smart enough to just say, Oh, taught by an omniscient being for me? Okay, I'll do it.

So they design a system to match our need, thank goodness.

Again, when we put out these offerings and later when we're actually going to offer them, those holy beings don't need them. Omniscience means they're aware of everything: past, present and future. They're already aware of them. So why in the world are we setting out offerings every day to enlightened beings who are already so blissed out? How do you possibly add more bliss to infinite bliss?

Well, because the bliss we offer to them we're contributing, they don't need it. We do. We need the water that we're offering.

We need the bathing that we're offering them.

They know that we need it and so they set up this system for us to make those offerings. It's for our benefit.

Okay, so that was step two, set up your altars make offerings.

Preliminary 3: Take your Posture, go for Refuge and Bodhichitta

1. Posture

Part of step two was taking your seat, but part three says about taking your posture.

So part three, take the posture.

Traditionally before you sit down and after you stand up, you make three prostrations. I'm going to come back to the prostrations in a minute.

But so, step three doesn't say do your prostration and sit down. It's implied.

You do your three prostrations and then you sit down. It's called taking your posture. We're going to have a whole class on the eight point posture of Vairochana.

This tradition suggests that right from the start, we try to get ourselves into lotus posture. If Lotus posture is just no way, know how, then half Lotus posture works, where with half Lotus, they say your right leg gets tucked in first and your left is the one where the ankle comes down on your thigh of your right.

Both of those postures are designed because of the way they lock your spine and pelvis in such a way that straighten the curve as much as the curve is able to be straightened and still be upright.

In that position, you've got this really solid base to where somebody could push you. If you're in Lotus and somebody pushed you over, you wouldn't come out of Lotus. You could just roll on your back like one of those sand dolls and you'd pop right back up and you'd be back in Lotus. That's how solid it is.

It has an effect on our subtle body to be able to be in that kind of such a solid posture that you can just forget your physical body. It's not going to move, it's not going to fall over, it's not going to wobble because it's so solid.

But a lot of us can't do either Lotus or Half Lotus, and then there's a variety of different non lotuses, and they can all work to get us into that stable posture. With no Lotus, we rely on a cushion more so in order to get ourselves locked into that position, but it still works.

But if we're starting our career, why not start with, I'm going to work on getting into half Lotus and then I'm going to work on getting into full Lotus. Over time you can get there, not in a week, not in a month, probably not even in a year necessarily, unless you're super mobile, flexible. But a little bit done regularly adds up over time. Just planting seeds.

When we take whatever posture we're going to take as a meditator, we need the support to be such that our spine locks into our pelvis in this certain way.

Even if we're sitting in a chair, then our legs need to be at 90 degrees. It may be that you need to be propped, your feet propped on a pillow to have your knees at 90 degrees or even a little bit higher to get your spine up the way it's supposed to be. When we're on a cushion, a certain cushion might rock you too far forward or rock you too far back. Without being there with you, I can't really describe how that works. But if you have someone with you when you're in your meditation posture, who knows what they're doing, they can look and they can adjust the height of your cushion. They can adjust how your chest is related to your chin. That will help you feel that locked position where your body just sets in.

My own experience when I first started was I needed pillows under both knees. I needed pillows, multiple pillows under my fanny, one in my back to keep me upright. I just did it. I started sitting cross-legged on the sofa when I was watching movies. I just little by little habituated to it, and then didn't need the pillows under my knees anymore, then didn't need the really specific meditation cushion anymore. Any old thing would do until I didn't need anything anymore. Bunch up my sweater, sit down. That was enough. But then I got injured, badly injured, and it was all gone for a whole year. Then, when I went to build it back up again, it reestablished very quickly despite that injury. But it took probably four years of propping and shifting and changing and struggling before it got so comfortable that I'd rather sit meditation style than even at the dinner table, because a regular chair is just not built for this body.

So be easy with yourself, be willing to try different cushions at different times. It's helpful when we start if the cushion that keeps you a little higher in the back than the front, because that helps lock us in that position. But at some point you won't need that anymore. It'll push you too far forward and you just pay attention to your comfort and to circumstances.

You'll be meditating at your house all the time with the same cushion and you think you're doing fine. Then you go on retreat somewhere and somebody else has a weird looking cushion and you try it on for size and it's like, wow, does this feel good—time for a change. It's okay to go that way.

We'll learn this eight point posture of Vairochana more specifically.

2. Go for Refuge

The second section in part three is, we go for refuge. We learned about refuge in the last course.

We seek refuge when we find ourselves in need of some help, in which case we have some level of fear, we have a problem, we can't fix it. We call who can.

Worldly refuge: police, fire department, doctor, grocery store. They fix the problem but they don't fix the problem.

When we've had enough of the refuges that fail us, we go looking for one that won't fail us, and we find Buddha, Dharma, Dangha.

When we sit down to do our daily practice, we want to remind ourselves of all of that in a short form.

Nothing worldly can fix the problem because the problem is our own mistaken understanding of where things come from.

The only refuge we can go to is to someone, something that can teach us about the mistake and guide us in learning how to stop making it again and again and again. That being may or may not have a physical body. That being probably can't put out the fire. But they can help us decrease and eventually not suffer from our house burning down.

It sounds impossible, but we're all at that place where we're looking for that kind of refuge. We have seeds to understand on some level.

So when we sit down at the beginning of our meditation session, the reason we're meditating is so that we can connect to these wisdoms, connect to these beings who teach those wisdoms, connect to our own inner part of us that probably already knows or is close to knowing to give ourselves a chance, to get in tune with that wisdom, to grow our ability off our cushion, to make different choices of behavior in order to grow our ability to stop perpetuating the mistake. Big circle.

Our refuge, we use the words:

I go for refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha

for non Mahayana refuge.

We always add:

I go for refuge to the three jewels,

by the power of the goodness that I do in—you fill in the details—

May I reach Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient being.

So our refuge prayer includes our Bodhichitta that it's one thing to want to grow the end of this mistake so that we ourselves can stop suffering. It's another to recognize, well, if that's true for me, what about everybody else? Isn't it true for everyone else?

We get this glimpse of that possibility of becoming one who really does stand on the billion planets and be what every being needs, not just human.

When that spurs our hearts, then our refuge includes refuge in being in a tradition that teaches us that, as well as just closing the door to our lesser rebirth, as well as reaching Nirvana but reaching our own fully enlightened being.

Buddhist refuge is a refuge that's born of our concern for what will happen when this life ends. Mahayana Buddhist refuge is born of the concern for everybody's, „What happens when this life ends?“—not just human.

The purpose of calling that forward at the beginning of our sit is, it allows us to align with what we're really trying to achieve by way of this time on our meditation cushion.

If that's our intention (when) meditating, the seeds we plant as we try to meditate include that intention.

If our intention is to lower our blood pressure, that seeds of our meditation include that intention.

Why not have the highest intention as we sit through our practice?

And we set it up at the beginning.

Preliminary 4: Visualize the lineage

‚The Lamas of the two lineages‘ is the way it's said in that one scripture.

Pabongka Rinpoche calls it visualize the merit field. The merit field means those beings who are such high karmic objects that anything we do towards them, it makes really, really powerful karma for us, karmic seeds for us.

Which means goodness and not so goodnesses are all really, really powerful.

The idea here is that you invite into your meditation space with you these powerful karmic object beings for them to witness you. You're actually going to mentally talk to them. While you're doing so, your own mind is aware that you are doing so, and your own mind is listening to what you're saying and what you're doing. That increases the power of the seeds that we're planting as we do that, to be imagining ourselves going through this sequence interacting with these sacred beings.

The same practice towards your ordinary goldfish would plant different seeds than the same words done towards a being that you're holding as a Buddha, a being made of love, compassion, wisdom. The understanding of what all that means grows over time.

Again, the system is, This is what you do. But we're learning a little bit about why. So we'll be more inclined to try it on first size.

Again, Pabongka Rinpoche‘s text, he describes this elaborate field of merit and it's like, here's Shakyamuni Buddha, and here's all of these guys and here's all of these guys. There's like a hundred different beings in that field of merit. It's like, No way can we do that. So they say, well roll them all into one being who for you is a manifestation of that love, compassion, wisdom.

Who knows who that might be. For many of us, it‘s Geshe Michael, for others it could be your grandmother. And it could change. We have a whole host of lineage Lamas, and at some point in your learning and training, they'll be one that sort of speaks to you more than the others have. Then, if you're inclined, you can say, okay, I'm going to have Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen be the one in front of me. You know, that guy who stood in front of the two armies and hollered at them and stopped war. I really admire that. I'm going to talk to him for a couple of weeks and see what happens.

We set these holy beings in front of us for our meditation time because that allows our meditation time to be planting seeds in our mind in a more powerful way than if we just sit there with our own mind.

This tradition is saying, you've set out your altars, you've done your prostrations, you've sat down, you've taken your refuge, you've established your Bodhichitta, and then you call forth the holy beings.

Other sequences say, Wait, set out your offerings, do your prostrations, sit down on your cushion and then call forth your holy beings, and take refuge in them and declare your Bodhichitta with them there listening to you. You can see how it works either way. Establishing our refuge and Bodhichitta is what attracts them. And then, Oh, there they are, and I'll do the rest of my preliminaries towards them. Or you say, come, You are the ones who are teaching me. You are the ones who can show me the way, you are the ones I admire so much, and I want to become like you to grow my refuge and my Bodhichitta. Try it either way and find what inspires you the most and then you can choose to sit with them.

Technically everyone, every living being is a merit field we've learned.

But within our merit field, there are some that are more meritorious than others—not from their side, but in the sense of the influence on the seeds that we plant in our interaction with them.

In a order of strength of karmic object, this tradition says if we have a sandwich and we offer it to a dog, even a special dog, Lassie, and we offer a sandwich to Lassie, we make some good karma. If we have the same sandwich and we offer it to somebody who's helped us in some way, a human who's helped us in some way, even if that human is not as special and kind as Lassie, because they're human, they are a more powerful karmic object than Lassie. Because a human, whether they've benefited us or been nasty to us, is closer to reaching their spiritual progress, enlightenment, in that lifetime than even the most special animal just by way of being human.

I've lost students from that teaching and I can see that that could happen.

The point is, there's something unique and special about being human no matter how rotten a human you are.

Then, if you have that same sandwich and you offer it to his Holiness, the Dalai Lama. If we see his Holiness the Dalai Lama as somebody special, the seeds planted are more powerful still than just an ordinary human.

If we offer it to someone that we believe or know to be a Bodhisattva, also hugely more powerful than just an ordinary human. Because they are so much closer to their enlightenment than the ordinary human.

Then, if we offer it to our heart Lama, even more powerful than offering to the Dalai Lama. Because our heart Lama by what makes them heart Lama, is that we have the seeds to see them as the one who loves us so much that they will serve us as the window or the portal to our own Buddhahood.

Same sandwich, same offering, different beings. But really the difference is our perception of those beings, our belief in those beings. It's not the beings themselves.

Then we throw in another category, and that's parents. Parents are on the level of Bodhisattvas in terms of the power of our karmic deeds towards them, whether they were parents we liked or not parents we liked. Simply by way of the fact that they gave us this human body.

We made the human life that we're having it, but they gave us the physical stuff that is this human body and it's from a human body that we have the opportunity to make this transformation. So parents are powerful karmic objects.

I've lost students from that one as well, because it's so difficult when we have parents that, you know, there are such parents that are very hard to relate to.

The teachings are not saying, Go to those nasty parents and treat them well. Until it occurs to us, oh my gosh, I can really fix this forever. But not until we're ready for that.

The point is, there are certain beings who have certain positions in relationship with us that the same deed done towards them will bring us a hugely different result. And when we're spending our time in meditation, we want to have there with us a being or beings who are the influence of the karmic seed planting for the result that we want.

So we set them up in front of us and we do our meditation with them in our visualization, or them in our mind if we're not visualizers, because of how it's going to influence the seeds that we plant.

The two lineages are the lineages of compassion—meaning method side, and the lineage of wisdom—the emptiness side as a specialty.

There's a method to do it. The main method is just start with that one being who inspires you the most. Call them forth. Think of their emptiness, think of their love, their compassion, their wisdom, admire them for it, and then start this fifth section, which is the purifying and gathering goodness.

Preliminary 5: Purifying and gathering goodness through the 7 Ingredients

We've only just gotten to the part that is the sequence that leads us to our meditation. Are you with me? Those who have been already doing it?

The 5th step in the 6 preliminaries is purify obstacles and gather goodness by doing the seven ingredients.

Now we've got 7 things that we're going to do before we get to the 6th preliminary, and then we're going to start to meditate.

Here we go. I have vocabulary.

These are the 7. These are the seven ingredients, or the seven limbs it's called, that make up the 5th step of the 6 preliminaries. Don't you love these lists?

The 7 ingredients

Chak-tsel = prostration
Chu-pa = make offerings
Shakpa = purification
Yi-rang-wa = rejoycing
Chu-kor kor-wa = ask for teachings
Soln-deb = ask teachers to stay
Ngowa = dedication (munlam = prayer)

1. Chak-tsel - Prostrations

Chak-tsel is step number 1 in our 7 ingredients. It means prostration. Wait a minute, we've already prostrated. I'm sitting on my cushion.

This is a mental prostration. So you've got your holy being in front of you, you're sitting on your cushion, you're thinking, saying mentally to them, Wow, you're so amazing—you finish the sentence, you're so amazing…

You can look at any text and read it. Geshe Michael, you're so amazing.

You can headstand without your hands. You're so amazing.

Whatever it is that you admire about them, you humble yourself before them and say, Wow, I really admire that. I'd like to become like you.

That's a Chak-tsel, a prostration.

The traditional prostration is a physical act.

There's a full length one and there's a partial one. Most people do the partial one unless they're doing the prostrations as a Ngondro practice.

For the physical prostration, the instruction is that you put your hands in prayer hands, which always has your thumbs tucked inside. So see, here's my thumbs, so that they represent the jewel in the lotus. They represent a lot of things, but we tuck our thumbs inside.

For the prostration, you touch your crown, which represents our wish to reach a body of a Buddha.

We touch our throat, like your thumbs would be at your throat, and then your fingers will come up to your mouth, signifying I aspire to the speech of a Buddha.

Then we touch our heart, which our heart organ is over here, but well over here. But what we mean is there where the heart chakra is, in the middle of the sternum where your nipples ought to be. Your elbows will come out a bit. This signifies I aspire to reach the mind of Buddha omniscience.

So body, speech, and mind of Buddha is what we're admiring and aspiring to be.

Then for the partial prostration, you slowly go down, put your hands on the floor. They say if you spread your fingers way out, you're reaching more beings than if you make them really skinny.

You go down, hands, knees, two hands, two knees, and then you rock forward and put your forehead to the floor. They say you go down slowly signifying your reluctance to ever go to a lower world. But once you get down there, you come up quickly grabbing as many lesser beings, beings in lesser realities as you can, and you throw them up to heaven and you come back with your arms to your heart.

It would be body speech, mind, down you go with a sense of putting our heads at feet of the holy beings and then grabbing hell realm beings, bringing them up and coming back to standing.

But again, we've already done those. You don't get up and do them again. At this point in the preliminaries, you're mentally saying, Wow, I really admire what it is to be a fully enlightened being, to be made of love. Something that will get your heart involved. You take just a few breaths worth of time to establish your Chak-tsel, your prostration leads to the next one.

2. Chu-pa - Make offerings

Step 2 is Chu-pa, make your offerings. You have your offerings on your altar already. This is in your mind. You can imagine that you're taking this water and offering them a glass of water and see them drink it and enjoy it. You can imagine you're washing their feet, and how pleasurable that can be. You can imagine giving them flowers.

When we learn the seven limbs, what Geshela always says, Yeah, make them the traditional offerings, but what they like best is to hear something about your practice, something where you actually did something that they had taught you about. And watch them beam with pleasure as they hear you say, Ordinarily I would've gotten mad when I blew up the stuff out of my mixer and I just laughed this time. They just go, Wow, that's so cool.

That's the kind of offering that our mind really benefits from.

So we make offerings.

3. Shakpa - Purify

The next one, Shakpa is the word for when you take out that metal wedge with your ax and you stick it in the log, and whack the metal piece down into the log to split it apart. It means to split open, Shakpa. Here it means to split open our tight holding on, avoiding telling anybody about the negativities that we've done, the selfishness is that we've done.

We know we've done things that when those seeds ripen back on us, we won't like it. Anything that fits that category is what we Shakpa, what we open up.

The idea is, Here's our holy being that loves us so much and we feel so safe with them that we can say, when Sumati did that thing, I thought, what a stupid thing to do, and I didn't immediately regret it.

It can be that small a thing, or it may be that, Man traffic was so bad and I flipped that driver off. To admit it in front of our holy being, like we can do that. It's harder to admit it in front of somebody—although it's a really good practice to do that. But our holy being loves us so much, they're going to go, Oh yeah, yeah, I understand.

Let's fix it. There's the process of the four powers of purification—that we're not going to do tonight, but we will do—about how you go about fixing what you just told them what mistake you made and they'll say, Yeah, yeah, let's fix it. We can damage that seed. It doesn't have to come back to you, and you have this little discussion with them and you make this pledge to do something to make up for it, and to avoid doing it again in a specific kind of way. Then know that by going through that process you're clean of that, you don't have to wait and see if you get clean. It's like, That one's done, taken care of, or at least modified in a big way. Shakpa.

That leads to the fourth:

4. Yi-rang-wa - Rejoyce

Yi-rang-wa, it's the word for rejoicing. We call it rejoicing tartuk. It's another word for rejoicing, but tartuk is more like the completion, making things complete.

Here Yi-rang-wa is filling this, like we just ripped a weeded out of our pool of karmic seeds and now there's this little hole in the ground from where the weeded came out, and we get to put new seeds in that fresh little hole—is the way Geshe Michael describes it. That analogy doesn't quite work for me, but the idea is the rejoicing practice comes hot on the heels of purification, because then we're supposed to say to this holy being, And I also held the door for that homeless person and I stepped aside in line for that person in the pharmacy… All these other little things that we aren't allowed to brag on ourselves in our human life, that our holy beings want us to hear ourselves take ownership of those kindnesses that we do all day long.

Here's the opportunity to do that, and they want us to. It's in the Yi-rang-wa, the rejoicing practice. It's a healthy practice to rejoice in our goodness. It's a healthy practice to rejoice in other goodnesses that you see in your environment around you, and it's a really powerful practice to rejoice in goodness that you see those that you don't like, in particular, doing. It's the hardest one, but you crack that challenge and big shifts happen.

5. Chu-kor kor-wa - Ask Holy beings to turn the wheel of the Dharma

Chu-kor kor-wa means to turn the wheel of the Dharma. This preliminary is the section where we ask that holy being, Please, please, please keep teaching.

We may mean formal teachings.

We may mean keep the dharma safe in the world.

We may mean keep me able to see that when that person cuts me off in traffic when I'm in a hurry: That's you teaching me, giving me an opportunity to practice my patience. Please keep bringing me those opportunities where I can learn and grow and practice.

Don't make that request until you're really ready, because they'll go, Okay, and help us in that way. You're not obligated to ask for more than what you feel ready to handle. Really, you're not.

All those holy beings want to do is teach us. They probably are standing in front of us, spouting the Dharma all the time, and we can't hear them, because we have the obstacles to that. So our own mind needs to hear us ask them to teach so that we can have the seeds to hear them teaching.

We see that in the sense of our particular tradition, like Buddhist tradition does not proselytize, and you're technically really not allowed to talk about your Buddhist practice until somebody asks. So then the art is to sneakily get them to ask in some way without revealing too much because again, you can say all you want to somebody and if they don't have the seeds to hear it or to be interested, their response is going to be disrespect, and those aren't seeds that you want to help somebody make.

So here you're asking that, holy being, please, please, please continue to teach me. Please stay. Please teach, this one's please teach.

6. Solndeb - Aks them to stay

Solndeb means to request.

We have requested them to continue to teach, but this request is we request them to stay in our life, to stay close. Again, it seems sort of silly, an omniscient, fully enlightened being who emanates us everything we need, they're the air we breathe. They're your bedsheets. They are with you constantly.

They don't need us to ask them to please stay. We need us to ask them to please stay in a form that I can relate to.

It's hard to relate to my bedsheets as a fully enlightened being, but I can do so to somebody who's got a human body or maybe a furry body. So we ask them to please stay for our benefit. It comes out, please, please stay. Please live long. Please don't die. All those to a non Buddhist tradition, it would sound peculiar. But when we understand what we're doing with our own mental seeds, who cares if they think it's peculiar?

Peculiar is a little different than, I don't want to hear about the Pen thing. We don't want to put them in that position, but to think we're a little weird, that's not so bad. Solndeb: Please stay. Please teach. Please teach. Please stay.

7. Ngowa - Dedication

Wait, we haven't even started meditating yet. And we're dedicating? Yes, because we've done an incredible practice just so far with our setting up the altar, our calling, the holy beings, going for refuge, et cetera, et cetera.

All of those seeds that we've been planting, a dedication is like locking them into the bank vault. Nothing can destroy them. Even if you get angry at a Bodhisattva, which destroys everything, it can't destroy seeds that you've dedicated properly.

I love this one, because it seems like such a default, because I know I'm going to mess up, but at least if I've got all of those seeds dedicated, they're not going to get hurt. Dedicate.

But what's the difference between dedicate and munlam?

I'm out of time. If I have extra 10 minutes from last week, may I have an extra 10 minutes? If you got to go, you've got to go. You'll get the recording, but if you can stay, let me finish this class please.

What's the difference between Nogowa and Munlam?

Munlam means prayer. To pray for something, to pray for something like Santa Claus, please bring me a red bicycle. That kind of prayer is to wish for something good to happen. Not just to me. Santa Claus bring Sumati a red bicycle. That's still a prayer, a wish for something good to happen.

Ngowa, dedication is we're taking something we've already done, seeds we've already planted, and we're fine tuning them by saying, I take this goodness that I've planted in me and I send it for this reason to this place for this reason.

They aren't seeds here that we're going to send to somewhere else.

But the seeds that we plant by saying these seeds are going to ripen in a very specific way for a lot of benefit other than just my own. That's the power of dedication. Something we've already done that we're sending into the future to create the result that we want from it.

The result that actually comes from it is going to be that or something better, because we can't quite conceive of how it's actually going to ripen. But this very specific deed of saying, I've made some goodness. I can just leave it there and let it grow and it'll be influenced by this and that and this and that, and who knows quite how and when it'll ripen, or I can take it and very specifically send it.

We have that dedication prayer that we say at the end of class:

By the power of the goodness of what I've just done,

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make.

That means I'm giving my good seeds that I made to every being, coming to learn and do what they need to do to reach their total enlightenment.

Now, you can dedicate things to more narrow, more specific, your own life involves seeds ripening. That's okay, but it's like that general purpose dedication is such a powerful thing to send our seeds to that it's hugely protective when we really do it with some strong intention.

Doing it just out of faith is helpful. Doing it really intentionally and consciously is even more powerfully, helpful. To dedicate, gowa, dedication.

Then that finishes the 5th step of the meditation preliminaries that had those seven limbs in it. You have a question about that?

Preliminary 6: Request blessings

Then we finish the six preliminaries with this step called Jinlap

Jinlap is another kind of request, so it's really another Solndeb, another requesting. Only here, what we're requesting is a blessing from that holy being.

We said before, holy beings can't give blessings from their own side. So when we ask for a blessing, what we're really asking for is, Please help me grow my ability to practice these things. Please help me grow my aptitude. Please help me stay inspired. Please help me stay open. Please help me stay compassionate. Please help me stay flexible. Please help me...

We're asking for them to specifically influence our mind, our heart in a way that helps us progress along the path, understanding that it's the power of the asking that plants the seeds for those results to come someday.

It's not that they will go, Oh, okay, since you asked bonked—although that can happen. It's not coming from them, it's coming from us.

It's usually translated as, give me your blessings, please, to...

At the end of the „give me blessings, please“, you've completed your preliminaries. You can take a shift and wiggle break, and then you settle back into meditation.

These preliminaries, we can get distracted and they can take hours, and the important thing is to not let that happen, to keep moving, learn to keep our preliminaries moving along smoothly so that 20 minutes max is spent, 15 can do it, 10, they're kind of rushed. But to leave us not feeling tired and worn out, but really well prepared because we've got our motivation clear, we've got our heart cleaned out, we're ready, we've got our connection with them, and then we're ready to go into meditation.

So in order to learn the practice of the seven limbs, Lama Tsongkapa gave his students a practice called Ganden hla-gya-ma—translated as the Thousand Angels of Bliss Practice. Which when we learn the whole practice actually can be used to approximate a tantric Lerung retreat, because it's a practice that combines visualization, recitation, mantra, and something happening while we're doing the mantra that helps prepare our minds and hearts for the higher teachings.

Here it's being given to us as the prayer that moves us through the seven ingredients, so we don't have time to do it together tonight. I was going to do that, but I talked too much. But we'll find a time to do it as part of this course or those after classes in February, and we'll go through it.

We won't learn the practice, but we'll get the transmission of the prayer and see how to use it.

Then at the beginning of my career, which was before ACI in Buddhism, I had been given just a brief recitation, a brief verse that is the summary of the preliminaries, and I'll share that with you to next week.

It just is a, what do you call it when you use phrases to trigger in your mind something. It's one of those.

Your homework assignment is to learn the seven limbs, understand where they come in the preliminaries, but just learn what they are, not meaning learn how to do them perfectly in a week all by yourself. But to explore them to have a better understanding of them.

Thank you for those extra minutes. Let's do our usual closing.

[Usual closing]

Class 3: The Six Conditions for Meditation

11 January 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Class 3

We are ACI course 3, class 3. This is January 11th, 2024.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do.

[Usual opening]

Review Class 2

(8:00)

Last class we learned the six preliminaries to a given meditation session, and within those six preliminaries were those seven ingredients. We studied from Choney Lama Drakpa Chedrup for those seven ingredients, right?

No, says Louisa. Who did we study from?

Luisa: The Lam Rim Chenmo from Je Tsongkapa.

Lama Sarahni: Yay. Perfect.

Okay, then we learned those things called the seven ingredients. Who can give me the first two, Natalia?

Natalia: First one is to do prostrations. Second one is to make offerings.

Lama Sarahni: To whom?

Natalia: To the higher beings,

Lama Sarahni: Right to the objects of refuge. We prostrate to the objects of refuge and then we make offerings to them. Makes sense?

What comes next?

Lian Sang: Confession. To Purify the obstacles of maybe medication.

Lama Sarahni: Nice. And after that,

Lian Sang: And then rejoicing in my own good deeds as such as others good deeds.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. Nice. Sweet. And then the last two? Monica.

Monica: I have three last.

Lama Sarahni: Okay.

Monica: I have request the holy being to please keep teaching, request them to stay in our lives and stay close, and finally to dedicate.

Lama Sarahni: Absolutely. You are correct. You've got me. Well done.

I really did misread my notes, so yay. Thanks for catching that.

So now listen carefully. These seven ingredients are part of which of the six preliminaries? Five. The seven ingredients are within the fifth of the six preliminaries. And of those seven ingredients, which gather the power of goodness?

Monica: All of them except the confession.

Lama Sarahni: Right. And that would make a good debate, wouldn't it? Doesn't confessing gather goodness by confessing? I would argue they all gather goodness, but one of 'em, you gather goodness by clearing your heart of negativity.

But the scripture says exactly what you said, all but the confession gather goodness and the confession clears obstacles.

Okay, got it?

And then lastly on your quiz, what work are we using for our practice of the seven ingredients? That's the Ganden Hlagyama prayer, A thousand angels of Bliss.

Before Sumati and I met the ACI curriculum, we'd already been studying Buddhism for a number of years with a Kagyu group. We'd learned the basics of meditation, Bodhichitta, et cetera and all of that. And they offered, they shared with us this poem of the seven ingredients. So we already knew that before we learned the ACI.

They're the same seven ingredients, but those of us who have heard and done them, they're more personalized in the ACI version. But I wanted to give you this prayer because it is helpful to move our mind through.

There are some days where you just don't have time to do your 15, 20 minute preliminaries and you can whip them off.

Don't do that often, but I'm just going to give it to you, you'll have it in the recording. It goes like this: (13:46)

With my body speech and mind humbly I prostrate,

And make offerings both set out and imagined.

I confess my wrong deeds from all time

And rejoice in the virtues of all.

Please stay until Sansara ceases

And turn the wheel of Dharma for us.

I dedicate all virtues to the great enlightenment.

It's all encompassing, but not detailed enough to just use the prayer as your preliminaries. But it's a great trigger if you need the trigger to go through the seven.

I just offered it, but recognize that that's not officially within the ACI lineage of teachings. It is an official Buddhist teaching out of the Kagyu tradition, so we won't explode if we use it.

Just, if you teach it, say, My teacher gave this to me from another tradition. Just to be clear.

Start Class 3 - The Six Conditions of the Environment

(15:25)

Tonight's class we're on to what's called the six conditions of the environment.

It's part of the understanding of how we set up our environment, both outer environment and inner environment to help us have a successful career as a meditator.

Similar to how the athlete or dancer or musician, when they decide, I'm going to take up this training with this goal of getting good enough to compete or perform, they're going to have to make some changes in their worldly life, in their choices.

It's not like somebody's going to say, You have to do this, this and this.

They're going to make these choices that allow them to be focused and less distracted, and able to spend the time necessary to do the necessary to reach their goal.

The six conditions of the environment is that idea mainly directed towards a long retreat in that setting up the proper outer and inner environment helps ensure that the time we take for our personal isolated long retreat, we'll have the momentum in which we can have a successful retreat. One that will leave us eager to do more retreat instead of coming out of a retreat like, well, I never want to do that again.

The same set of circumstances that we'll learn about, we can also adjust them to see how they would apply to our own life circumstances to help us be successful in our daily meditation career as well. But this teaching isn't designed for that. It's designed for retreat.

This evening's teaching has 3 different texts that Lama Tsongkapa draws upon for his Lam Rim Chenmo part of the six conditions of the environment. He's putting together information from the tradition, a little bit is over here, a little bit is over there, a little bit is over there. He's bringing it all together into his Lam Rim Chenmo to make it easier for us.

One of the texts that he's commenting on is called the Dodey Gyen, or Sutralamkara.

Let me get up the vocabulary list.

Vocabulary

Texts used by Je Tsongkapa

Tibetan Author

Dodey Gyen (Sutralamkara) by Master Asanga (350 AD) (dictated by Lord Maitreya)

Gom Rim by Master Kamalashila (850AD)

Abhidharmakosha by Master Vasubandhu (350 AD)

The Six Conditions

Tunpay yul ‚harmony place’, a conducive place
Du-pa chung-wa Not needing much to be satisfied
Chok she-pa Being satisfied with whatever you get
Ja mang pang Give up business
Tsul-trim dakpa Pure morality
Nam-tok pang Give up desire

Here's Dodey Gyen. That's the Tibetan, the text's name is the Sutralamkara. So it's a long A here, because it's Sutra and Alam, but we lose the other A, Sutralamkara. Which sometimes they say written by Master Asanga. But was it written by Master Asanga?

No, it was taught by Lord Maitreya and Arya Asanga took dictation I would guess, and then brought it back and taught it. Asanga‘s dates are the 350 AD timeframe in India, although they say 50 years of that he has spent in Lord Maitreya's paradise.

I don't know how old he was, how old he lived.

Sutralamkara, what does it mean? Jewel ornament of realizations, or something like that. Dodey Gyen.

The Dodey Gyen gives us this overview of these six conditions of the environment: (21:30)

Tunpay yul
Du-pa chung-wa
Chok she-pa
Ja mang pang
Tsul-trim dakpa
Nam-tok pang

Condition 1: A conducive place

Tunpay yul = a harmony place

Tunpay = harmony

That just gives me an idea. Hold on, I want to write that down. Thank you.

What it means is to get along, a place where people get along, a place where you can get along. So what it means is a conducive place, a place that's conducive to meditation or retreat.

In this text, Arya Asanga says, A good place to meditate should have these five qualities. Don't you love the Gelukpas?

A nice outline: six conditions.

The first condition, a conducive place.

It has five qualities.

Comfortable

The first is, it should be comfortable. You do not, as a great practitioner, need to go sit on a rock in the desert and do your month long retreat. They in fact say, Don't do that, even if you want to. Find a place that's comfortable, meaning your needs can easily be met: you can get food, you can get water, you have clothing, you have heating or cooling or at least some semblance of that for the extremes. You can bathe when you need to.

Of course it means in moderation, because this isn't saying, Oh, have it as comfortable as you want it. It's saying you should be conducive to you being able to do the meditation sessions that you're going to be doing in this retreat.

So if you are in a retreat space where you have to go and hunt and gather, we don't hunt and gather, but gather your nuts and seeds and berries for food, you'll be spending more time doing that than you will doing your meditation practice.

Unless your retreat is about learning how to gather nuts and berries, that's a different thing. But you get what I mean.

On the other hand, you also don't say, Well then I'm going to book an Airbnb in Hawaii where I can just call out for room service, and I'll have a really good retreat. That could work, but it also could be wildly distracting, when you've promised to stay inside your room and have no contact with others and that beach is out there. It's like, Oh man.

So we're looking for a place that's suitable, adequate, comfortable.

When we were building the retreat cabins at Diamond Mountain, David and I had the good fortune to have been able to do multiple retreats there already in various kinds of not quite meeting this category places, and we lived there.

So when we were starting to think of the needs for our retreat cabin, before even needing a toilet, we knew we needed a screened-in porch. Because in Arizona the instant you open a door, 6 million bugs fly in. So you needed a space for the bugs to fly in, that was different than your meditation space.

They could have the porch, but they couldn't have my room.

But once they were in the porch, they didn't seem to want to be in my room. So they didn't go flying into my room when I opened the door, the way they flew into the porch. I don't know what was up with that, but we made it a point to have a screened-in porch to a big added expense. Other folks hadn't made that a priority, and after the first month retreat—David was part of the maintenance, he was the maintenance person in retreat— he got these notes, I need a screened-in porch, please help. I need a screened-in porch.

And he built three or four screened-in porches as additions to other people's cabins. Again, when you're looking for a retreat cabin in Hawaii, I think you're going to want to ask, Does it have a screened-in porch?

We wouldn't know that if we didn't have somebody who'd done retreat without screened-in porch, and done retreat with screened-in porch and realized, Whoa, that makes more, a bigger difference than having flush toilet or not flush toilet. Honest.

Conducive environment. If you can't stand the heat, don't book your retreat at Diamond Mountain between June and September. If you can't stand the cold, don't book your retreat at Diamond Mountain between December and March. If you like the cold… You get it?

Don't set yourself up for failure.

It's not part of the practice to be miserable.

That's true for daily life as well.

So somehow your meditation daily practice career needs to be harmonious with the people you share your space with. If you're fighting with them to get an hour of quiet time in the corner of your living room, your career is not going to go very well.

Be willing to negotiate, help them understand why it's important to you and that they're going to benefit. But find some way to be harmonious, and find our harmonious space for yourself. Scripture says so.

Even if it doesn't exactly fit, it's not a place that you can have a whole altar. Fine. As long as it's conducive in other ways.

Safe place

Second factor in your comfort knowing your harmony place, conducive place is: it should be a safe place. Don't set yourself up to do long retreat in a place where there's burglars, or drug cartels, or political unrest that you know about.

We can't control everything. In three year retreat, at one point there was a fire bearing down on us, and there was no way. Suddenly a safe place went to not such safe place. We can't control that of course, but again, there's no need to go put ourselves in harm's way thinking that's what it takes to have a powerful practice, because it won't be powerful. It'll be too distracted.

Healthy environment

Third one is, the words are the environment should be healthy, meaning an environment that doesn't strain one's physical health.

You wouldn't want to be in a marshy mosquitoe place in the summer, because of the increased likelihood of diseases spread by the mosquitoes. Or food spoiling before you get it or get to eat it.

Within this category they also say, it should be a place that's not too noisy.

Noise is a really difficult distraction to meditation. It's like, in the death process, they say the hearing is the last to go. We can still hear in very, very subtle ways. And so even as we're withdrawing our attention from our sensory inputs, the hearing is the hardest to withdraw down from. We can be really, really deep and then some kind of sound happens. Not even an inner sound.

You can be really deep in meditation and then, oh my gosh, you have to swallow and it sounds like a bomb going on. Or your belly gurgles, and it's like burr, you're kicked right out of the level that you were in by things you don't have any control over.

But one of the things to ask about the retreat space you're checking: What's nearby? Where's the nearest airport? Where's the nearest marble mine?

Which wasn't functioning during three year retreat, and started functioning the month we got out. And there was this bang, bang, bang from far away. But really like this deep pound, you could feel it. If that had been happening during retreat, oh man, what a bunch of mental afflictions that would've caused.

I've never been there at Diamond Mountain with that happening, but I haven't done retreats at Diamond Mountain since I left in 2014. Diamond Mountain is still a really great place to do retreat, but there are some things we have no control over.

When you're choosing a retreat space, ask, Are we in the flight path of an airport?

Ask those questions before you make your decision.

Good friends nearby

The next one, fourth part of a conducive place is, the words say „good friends“, you have good friends nearby. But what that means is that the person or persons that are your support team for your retreat, you like them, you respect them, you admire them, and you know—to the best we can know—that they respect and honor what you're doing. They're like on the same page. They understand that what you're trying to do is the most powerful thing a person can do to help change the world.

They're in on it, because they're the one who's going to bring you your food order once a week. Or bring you your dinner once a day.

If that person is cooking for you, all the more reason you want them to understand what you're doing, what you're trying to do. So that the vibe, their vibe that gets into your meal from them cooking it, will at least not be negative, not be against what you're doing. We would check them out.

Again, if we're going to a retreat place and they say, yeah, yeah, we'll cook for you and we'll drop it off. It is reasonable to know what the belief system is of the people who are cooking, and to go and meet them. That's hard, because maybe you get there and you find out, oh my gosh, their cook, eww. But you're going to rely on them anyway. I don't know what to do about that. There are practices that you can do to clear the meal, but it's something to think about before you even set yourself up into that position of a retreat place.

A place with Goodness

Lastly, in this section, they say the place should have goodness. What they mean by that is that it's a really powerful asset to retreat in a place where others have retreated before you in similar practices as you are wanting to do. Similar lineage, similar ideals. It means the place has been blessed, they say. Meaning it's picking up the vibration of the practices that they have done there, been done there.

When we first got Diamond Mountain, it had been a cattle ranch, and that place where the fighting between the Native Americans and the white settlers had happened. So there was a lot of negativity. I wasn't aware of that, thank goodness. But a lot of people were. And through the power of what went on to develop Diamond Mountain, take us through the Diamond Way practices, and all the ups and downs that we had—which was a lot—that negative vibe has slowly shifted to a more and more positive one. To where people go there now and they say, Wow, it feels so great to be at Diamond Mountain. It wasn't always like that, for those who can feel that kind of stuff.

It's the power of everybody's previous goodness staying there, and we can benefit from that. Again, I'm not saying Diamond Mountain's the only place. There are many retreat centers in many different traditions, all of which probably have really, really great vibes. It's something to be aware of, even ask about if you were checking out some other retreat space.

I don't know how you ask, who you ask, How's the vibe here?

But you get the right person and they'll know exactly what you're talking about.

So then similar, all of those apply similarly to our own daily space and within the arena of the changes that we can create in that daily space, we have some guidelines that we can go by.

If your conclusion is, I have to move out because my family doesn't fit, Don‘t, don't!

Work with your seeds, it will shift. Not to worry. None of this needs to be done tomorrow. Only your homework and quizzes.

It's hard to get the opportunity to get a long weekend for a personal retreat, let alone two weeks, let alone month or six weeks, let alone three months, let alone…, right?

It seems almost impossible.

If we have the goodness that suddenly life says, Wow, I could take two weeks off, I'm going to go do retreat. We want to know what kind of circumstances to put ourselves in so that we can get the most bang for our buck in those two weeks. We don't want to go somewhere where we're struggling to get comfortable, because by the time we do, you've only got two days left. Okay?

Our tradition emphasizes solitary retreat. In fact, the tradition of the tradition recommends solitary retreat where you are inside not even looking out windows. Because to see anything that you're used to seeing will pull you back into ordinary reality. The purpose of going into solitary retreat is to give yourself this undistracted time where you don't see anyone seeing you, and you don't see anyone that you're used to seeing. Because the instant we see another human, we're back to being human ourselves.

The instant we see a bird, we're back to being a human seeing a bird.

In these retreats we're trying to identify with being empty of being human, deity, hell realm, animal. We're trying to live in this space of being all potentiality.

You don't even want to a mirror because you see yourself and you'll be yourself again.

Now, you're going to see your hands, but there's this whole art of setting up your interior environment so that it's different enough that you cannot be ordinary you for the time that you're in there.

Not all traditions do that, and not everybody's able to benefit from being so withdrawn from sensory input and be comfortable with that. So there are many, many different modifications, of course.

Then, when we do group retreat, that's a whole different thing. We're not trying to be the empty me because we're around other people that benefits us. Group retreat benefits us in big ways, but different ways.

Condition 2: Not needing much to be satisfied

(44:55)

The second of the six conditions of the environment, Du-pa chung-wa.

Dupa chungwa means an attitude, I'm not sure how the words break down, but it means an attitude of not needing much to be satisfied.

So these two, Du-pa chung-wa and Chok she-pa, these are conditions of our attitudinal environment, not the outer environment.

you don't need much to be satisfied
chok shepa = being satisfied with whatever you get

Those are two different feelings.

Not needing much to be satisfied could mean the person who's cooking for me, we've told them upfront, I'm fine with lentils and quinoa and a green salad every day of the week if you want. Or three days a week, and yams and butter and tomatoes one day. Just really, really simple. It makes it easy on your caregiver, it makes it easy on you.

You choose foods that you know digest easily, are satisfying. Ask for extra oil because when you're in your own personal retreat, you want to increase your oil intake, because it helps keep the energy grounded.

Really, really simple requests, simple needs, simple clothing that you take in with you, simple. Things that you'll be satisfied with.

Condition 3: Being satisfied with whatever you get

Then the second one is being satisfied with whatever you get. It's like you ask for lentils and quinoa, but they keep sending in these elaborate, fancy, amazing mixed vegetable meals. Be satisfied. Alright, great vegetables, it is.

These two also pertain to our personal lives.

To what extent are we easily satisfied, and to what extent are we satisfied with whatever comes? It seems like, well, that's the antithesis of being human. I'm supposed to become a human who's happy. It sounds like it means that only things that make me happy come to me. But really, it's growing the karmic seeds to be happy regardless of what's going on.

It‘s a huge shift to understand that, and I know not intellectually understand it, but to recognize how easy life gets when we're easily, what is it? Don't need much to be satisfied and satisfied with whatever it comes.

Condition 4: Give up too many activities

Ja mang pang. It's a tongue twister for me. Ja mang pang.

Ja mang = many activities

Pang = to give them up, give up doing many activities

This means within our retreat time, our purpose is to focus on whatever practice it is we're taking into retreat with us. That's the main focus and all the other things that we might be tempted to do, like, Oh, what a great time to memorize scripture. What a great time to rewrite my ACI notes, what a great time...

They say, No, no, your retreat is not a great time to do all those things. Your retreat is designed to pull yourself into whatever the retreat practice is that you went into retreat with. So we don't want to load ourselves up with all kinds of things that we will accomplish when we're in our weekend retreat, two week retreat, month retreat. We want to focus on the practice that that retreat is about.

There's a benefit there for having a retreat support person so that you're not even distracted by what you need to prepare to eat. That's not always possible to have somebody either cook for you daily, or have a system where your meals are precooked but frozen and you have someplace that all you have to do is take it out and then heat it up and eat it.

The simpler the better, the less distracting the better.

Our own minds and our own heart will fight that, even when we go into retreat. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to be really focused and really undistracted. We'll find our own selves wanting to come up with something. Because our habit is to—multitask isn't quite the right word—but our habit is to juggle many different things and that somehow shows us how capable we are and how involved and engaged we are. We have to go through this stage of feeling like, This is the opposite of what I've trained myself to do as an effective human adult to only focus on one thing.

Maybe it seems like we're doing really poorly at that and still do it over and over and over again without letting ourselves get so discouraged we take ourselves out; or so tight into it that we end up with that condition Lung, where our energies start to build up and we get anxious and upset and then our own energies kick us out of retreat.

To be able to know what minimal activities are for us just takes practice. We see it in our daily lives as well, that when our priority does become my meditation progress now is as important to me as, I don't know, fill in the blank, my next promotion at work, or it's as important to me as...

When our own heart is saying, I see that my meditation practice is important for me to be an effective human in my outer world, then our own activity choices are going to change. Our task is to allow ourselves to make these new choices and let those other ones just fade away without feeling like, Oh, I'm a failure that I can't do it all. We can't do it all, because our old kind of life of busy, busy, busy, busy blocks the ability for our meditation practice to have the effect on us that we're doing it for.

Ja mang pang is this giving up the extra activities. Once you're inclined to do so, don't force it on yourself prematurely or it won't have the good effect that you want it to have.

Condition 5: Pure morality

Tsul-trim dakpa

Tsul- trim = morality

Dakpa = pure morality

We're already trying to live by pure morality, by keeping our vows, by using the vows as guidelines for how to avoid harming others, and how to gather some goodness.

When we have a retreat coming up, it's especially useful to especially intentionally find places where you can crank up the power of your morality, and really intentionally live as cleanly as you can going into that retreat.

How long before?

Hard to say. When you're at the place where you have gotten out your suitcase and you're putting stuff into it, that's a little bit late. So before you start packing, you're already cleaning up your act even better.

They say it's a really great help to do some specific project, virtuous project that you bring to fruition just as you're going into retreat. Like not the day before, but as you're starting to pack, you finished teaching an ACI course, or grading everybody's papers, or whatever your arena of service or creating goodness is. You take something on intentionally that you can complete before your retreat and then as you complete it, you dedicate that goodness to your successful retreat and you ride the power of that virtue into retreat.

They also recommend doing some kind of careful four powers of purification before your retreat. You're going to do lots of that in retreat, because before every session you're going to do your meditation preliminaries. It's got your four powers within it. But, you think back in life and think of some negativity you did as a teenager probably, and get it off your chest and do some antidote—it could be your project that you're going to complete—to clean out that stuff as best as you can. When you get in a deep retreat, one of the main distractions are these memories that pop up out of the blue. They very commonly are negative ones—for a while, not forever—because you're going to change 'em by being in retreat. But up they'll come and the ability to rationalize through them and stuff them back down, which we've gotten so good at, you won't be able to do that in retreat. They'll just like they're, they're back again. So you want to clean that stuff out to the best of your ability.

We can't do it all, but there'll be some, some that when you look down deep, it's like, Okay, that's still in there.

Somehow try to get it modified or get it out before you go in your retreat.

In daily life same thing. There might be a case for taking a period of time where you do a life review and be really open with yourself. Nobody else is going to see your list but you. You just write down all these ways that we were a jerk to whoever it was we were a jerk to, and then recognize, I didn't know enough. I was just an ordinary, selfish human trying to get what I want. I just didn't know any better. Now I do, I really regret it, really. And I'm going to try really, really hard to be a whole lot different and this is what I'm going to do as my antidote.

Maybe it could be 10 minutes of emptiness meditation for the next 30 days, and when I really do it, I know that those seeds are damaged.

The power of the four powers is how we apply them.

Then our daily four powers in the preliminaries, you can just think, Well yesterday, what do I want to clear myself of today? Then you see we're starting to keep up just by doing our daily meditation preliminaries.

Okay. Let's take a break and then we'll finish up. Actually, I don't have much, too much more to say.

(Break) (61:45)

Condition 6: Give up sensory desires

Nam-tok pang

Namtok literally means wrong thought fantasies. But somehow what that means is our sensory desires, wrong thought fantasies, word means sensory desires. Meaning we see the piece of chocolate, we want the piece of chocolate because the piece of chocolate is going to taste good and give me pleasure because chocolate has that in it, right?

Pang means to give that up, to give up these sensory desires.

It's like, man, if we could just do that, we wouldn't need retreat. I don't quite get it.

The condition doesn't mean don't go into retreat until you've gotten rid of your sensory desires. But it means in retreat, be especially diligent at withdrawing from them, which is why one might want to go into retreat into a room that's comfortable and safe, and healthy and your needs are met, but isn't necessarily exquisitely beautiful, filled with amazing art or even with beautiful views. Because from a worldly sense that's going to keep us in that old habit of, That's beautiful. It gives me pleasure. It must come from it.

It's part of the reason why this deep tradition actually covers the windows and says, Don't go look out unless you're getting Lung. Then you go out and you look at the sky, or you look at the stars at night. But you don't go out and like, Wow, what a beautiful waterfall. Which there's nothing wrong with that, just not in retreat. Because we're trying to withdraw from that automatic, That's beautiful. It gives me pleasure. I want it.

It does not mean put yourself in a place where you're in the, That's ugly. I don't want it. Not that either. Comfortable, safe, et cetera, but not surrounded by things that are going to keep you in the fantasy of sensory objects as the source of my pleasure.

In daily life practice, this does not mean strip your house down to bear nothing.

Although there is that big advantage of the decluttering movement and simplicity. The beauty of the Japanese tradition, you have a room with one cushion, one flower vase and nothing else. It's like, Wow, that is amazingly beautiful to be so slim and simple et cetera. Some balance between that austerity and the tendency towards the excessiveness that we as humans tend to do. Find some balance in daily life.

Find some balance for in your meditation space. Again, I'm looking at my altar and it's like everything on that altar has deep meaning for me. But there's a lot there.

Then, when I sit down on my cushion, I can't see all of it. It's higher up, thank goodness. So I fool myself to say I can get away with it because when I'm sitting at my cushion I can't see it. But I do better to clean it all off and just circle between things, and I just don't do that. I confess.

One of the ways that we grow this Namtok pang state of mind is as we work with our understanding of the karma and emptiness sequence of profound dependence and how we become more aware of how it is that we become aware of something, and we see it as pleasurable or not pleasurable in it from it. Our automatic reaction is to blame it for either its unpleasantness or its pleasantness. Automatic from that blame is to either want to get rid of it or want to get it, believing that the pleasure in it will bring us the pleasure we expect.

We all know intellectually that in fact, no one of those steps is true, is correct. It seems like it, because when we avoid something unpleasant, we don't have the unpleasantness we had expected to get from it.

When we get the thing we expect is going to give us pleasure, we get the pleasure. But not always. But when we get it in the moment, it's enough. Our self existent belief goes, See? I'm right. Then, when the time I'm not right, Whoa, it looks like a delicious piece of chocolate and it turns out that it's a lump of cocoa. Bitter, not sweet. It's like, Whoa, who did that to me? What was wrong with that cocoa? I just said it. It was cocoa, not chocolate. It wasn't sweet. Ew. I didn't say, Wait, what happened to my karma? It shifted from when I picked that up to when I put it in my mouth.

We don't think like that. But we're training ourselves to recognize this. We keep fooling ourselves into believing that our sensory objects are the source of our happiness and they're not.

That's what this one's about, is paying close attention to our own personal experience to see if we can catch ourselves in this reconfirming the mistake when things work the way we expect from what we just did. Because that‘s like the worst thing that can happen to us. But we're so happy when it does.

Retreat time is a time where you can reduce all of that so that when it does happen, you can be a little bit more aware of it. It helps us gain those insights.

Luisa: For me it's a bit difficult to do that, what you just said, you start to be aware, okay, the chocolate is not giving me happiness or this class with you, what I am doing now here and the piece that I feel is not coming from you or the teaching itself. It’s coming from something else. Because then when I'm going through life and then I need to kind of calm down, then of course I seek for some kind of refuge that could be also in the Dharma. Like I go and then I don't know, read a bit of the Heart Sutra and I am still thinking in the moment I feel some peace. So it reaffirms like, yeah, the Dharma is the way. But it seems to be wrong as what you are saying.

Lama Sarahni: It is wrong.

Luisa: Then it confuses me. Then you cannot trust yourself, then you cannot trust any feeling, because any feeling is misleading you. You know what I mean? If I feel now comfortable because I went to the retreat in Diamond Mountain, but then I start to think, well this is not coming from the retreat. I don't know, for me it's very confusing in the application of that.

Lama Sarahni: Right. So it is true: To think your comfort comes from reading the Heart Sutra, because there's something in the Heart Sutra, you are correct that that is incorrect. Yet, it is a much greater goodness to go for ignorant refuge in the Heart Sutra than it is in a glass of wine, or an overeating chocolate, or a yelling at the boss. It's getting us in the right direction to take refuge in the Dharma thinking there's something in the Dharma that is helping me because it feels like it is. When we get some comfort, those are ripening seeds from when we gave someone else comfort who was distressed. That ripens for you through the Dharma or the Dharma teacher, and that's a great goodness.

Although it still is contributing to ignorance, because that object of your refuge has this quality from your perception as being a more important thing as a source of your pleasure, it is moving you in the right direction. Pleasure is an accurate—I dunno what to call it—feeling. Pleasure is valid. What makes the pleasure is what we're misunderstanding. Any pleasure we feel it's a result of a goodness—ignorant or otherwise. It's something to be happy about. To keep going for that pleasure to things that actually harm will wear out our ability to feel pleasure at all. To go for pleasure to things that we hold to be a source of insight will actually increase the ability to feel pleasure. Is there anything in the Heart Sutra that can bring anybody pleasure? No. Right? That's coming from you.

Luisa: But in that case, let's say my mother-in-law who is super Catholic, then she will get the same pleasure I'm getting from attending this class, but her from her going to the church every day for five hours, I don't know.

Lama Sarahni: Exactly.

Luisa: Then it'll increase. So it's going to reinforce their belief that the Catholic church or the beliefs in the Catholic religion are going to free her. Which is bad at the end. I mean.

Lama Sarahni: No. It's not bad at the end, because as that continues to grow, what she understands her Catholic belief to be, will bring her to the same level eventually. We can't see it because we think that their goal is this, and we think they think their goal is that. But, if they're following their spiritual path the way we're following our spiritual path, they themselves will at some point also see that, Oh my gosh, there's this greater goal that they can achieve. This life? I don't know, maybe.

Luisa: Okay, thank you Lama.

Scriptural Sources

In Je Tsonkapa‘s Lam Rim Chenmo, which all of this was from, he got it from these three different sources. This general information on the six conditions of the environment are from the Dodey Gyen.

Then he went to the Gom Rim, Master Kamalashila‘s Gom Rim, which means stages of meditation. Master Kamalashila‘s Indian Master around 750 AD.

He also spoke to these six conditions of the environment. My guess, he got them from Dodey Gyen, I don't know that for sure.

Then the Sutralamkara also clarifies: What is a conducive environment?

Then Abhidharmakosha by Master Vasubandhu, Master Asanga‘s half brother, remember? 350 AD in India. In that text it goes into some detail about needing, having few needs to be satisfied and being satisfied with whatever you get. Those are just mentioned in Sutralamkara and Master Kamalashila‘s Gom Rim. But some detail in Abhidharmakosha, apparently.

Lama Tsongkapa wraps it all together into the Lam Rim Chenmo, which is why Geshe Michael is using it. But he wants us to understand where Lama Tsongkapa got it from, so we don't get the idea that Je Tsongkapa isn‘t making any of this stuff up.

Then, in your reading, Je Tsongkapa quotes the Kadampas of Tibet. Kadampa means these new Buddhists from 1000-1200 AD that time period where, if you recall, it was a group of people who, they would all learn something and they would all teach each other. Some would go to India and some would go to other places to gather, to learn stuff, and then they'd come right back and they'd teach their friends.

Then, within that tradition of the Kadampas came the Lojong tradition, that was very, very tightly kept oral teaching, secret teachings, for a long, long time. Remember from course 14. We'll get there.

The Kadampas apparently would say to each other, when we find ourselves unable to develop deep concentration, we blame it on the instructions that we've gotten, and we go and look for some different instruction. The real problem though is that we have failed to prepare ourselves properly.

Rather than trying to find some different meditation or some different teacher or some different, I don't mean me teacher, but different meditation lineage, apply ourselves to our: How am I living my life to cultivate my meditation practice? Or am I living my life in a regular or old, ignorant human selfish way, and then expecting myself to be able to sit down and bring my mind to single pointed concentration? When I'm interrupting people and wanting this and wanting that. Maybe set up these preliminaries before you even try to meditate, which I think is partly why in this ACI course 3, we don't actually ever meditate together. Because he's saying, let's get our preliminary ducks in a row, and then we'll try it on for size. It makes sense karmically.

Now, it's curious that these teachings don't say stop interrupting people, be calm around other people. Like plant the seeds—what do they say in DCI—still lake. Cultivate other still lakes so that our own mind can reach still lake. It really is, the piece that isn't spoken clearly in these preliminaries, but if we look into them all, it would be part of the picture. Where is it that we're distracting people?

I see it. We're driving and David's talking about something. I see a beautiful bird and—it's just human just say, Oh, look at that bird.

But I've just interrupted him and distracted my own mind from the road. It's so automatic. Where I suppose if I was really serious and he was telling me something that I really needed to pay attention to, I would stop. Tell me what you need to say. I'm going to really pay attention. It probably wouldn't take very long to really shift my meditation practice. It just occurred to me to do that.

But there's so many different ways that we distract our own minds as well as distracting others that are just perfectly normal human things to do.

But when we decide: My meditation practice is going to make me into a superhuman, then I'm going to stop behaving like an ordinary human and some people aren't going to like it. So sorry, I'm doing it because I love you.

But balance that off with who's close and who's far.

Meditation assignment

85:09

I'm actually done. I'm done with this class. You're supposed to learn the six conditions and you're supposed to meditate, or contemplate on how the six conditions would create a successful retreat.

You could think about, here's a scenario where I'm in a retreat cabin, saying my Heart Sutra or my Thousand Angels of Bliss practice that I'm doing four times a day for 10 days. Here I'm in a retreat cabin that has all these different conducive circumstances.

Then imagine you're in a retreat cabin that has none of them.

Then, maybe, it has two out of the five or six, or four. Play with that and you'll get a sense of the power of these understanding these six conducive environments just by fantasizing being in retreat where you don't have any of them. Okay?

I had said before that if we had time, I would give you the oral transmission of the Thousand Angels of Bliss. Some of you have already had it. Is there anybody who has not had it, not heard it, read it before? Okay, great. So let's do it.

I have it here in front of me. If you know it, you're welcome to recite it along with me. Just keep yourself muted please so that the ones, we're not all distracted. Let's just listen to it, it's descriptive.

It's descriptive in its verses, and so if you want just listen and let the imagery flow. Sometimes that's more fun than saying the words themselves.

Okay, for those who are new, you just listen. Open yourselves up to see what comes. Okay, ready?

(88:00)

Thousand Angels of the Heaven of Bliss, a prayer of Lama devotion

Please come to Lobsang Drakpa,

King of the Dharma who knows all things

Come with your sons riding upon the tops of clouds,

Like mountains of pure white snow.

Come from the heart of the Lord of a thousand angels

Living in the heaven of bliss.

Sit in the air in front of me

On a throne of cushions of the moon and lotus,

Set on the backs of lions.

My holy Lama with pure white smile, happy with me.

I ask you to stay for a million years to spread the teachings.

Stay for there is no one higher than you

With whom I may make merit by goodness of my faith.

Your mind is knowledge

That wraps around the entire mass of knowable things.

Your words are jewels of good explanation

That we, the fortunate, wear on our ears.

Your body shines forth,

Shines with brightness, shines with glory the world will see.

I bow to you

Just to see you, just to hear you, just to think of you

Brings great things.

I make in my mind and place her as well

An ocean of gifts that could cover the sky.

Presents to please all of your senses,

Every different color of flower,

Sweetest fragrant incense,

Lamps of light, perfumes upon your body,

And other gifts as well

Do I offer you,

There is no one higher with whom I may make merit.

From deep within my heart

I am sorry deeply and openly confess one by one

The harm that I have done

In my acts, or words, or thoughts.

Any and every wrong kept with me from time with no beginning,

Especially what I may have done

Against any one of the three different kinds of vows.

Here in the age of degeneration,

You made every effort to gain great learning.

You threw away the eight worldly thoughts

And so made use of your leisure and fortune.

Savior, we rejoice.

We are glad, happy deep inside for what you have done,

So good and powerful.

Holy Lamas high.

Wrap the sky of your Dharma bodies

In massive clouds of knowledge and love.

And let them pour upon the earth of your disciples.

As we are ready, a shower of rain,

The teachings, deep and wide.

May any goodness I have done

With this my prayer

Be a help to the teachings and to every living being.

I make a special prayer too

That for many years to come,

I may carry forth the light,

The essence of the word,

The teachings of Je Tsongkapa.

Come I pray and sit my root Lama,

Shining and precious upon the lotus atop my head.

Take me after you in great kindness,

Grant that I attain

Your body's speech and mind.

I pray to the one who holds the diamond,

The source from where every goal is found.

I pray to loving eyes,

Treasure of love with no one it loves.

I pray to soft, glorious voice,

Lord of knowledge that has no stain.

I pray to the keeper of the secret

Who smashes all the army of demons.

I pray to Je Tsongkapa

Crowning jewel of masters of the land of snow.

I pray to one, I pray at the feet,

I pray to Lobsang Drakpa.

Come, I pray and sit my root Lama

Shining and precious upon the lotus in my heart.

Take me after you in great kindness,

Grant that I attain your body's speech and mind.

Come, I pray and sit my root Lama

Shining and precious upon the lotus in my heart.

Take me after you in great kindness,

Grant that I attain, both common and highest goals.

Come, I pray and sit my root Lama

Shining and precious upon the lotus in my heart.

Take me after you in great kindness.

Stay here, never moving until the Buddha's essence.

Through all the strings of my future lives,

May Tsongkapa the victor come to me and serve himself

As my spiritual guide in the teachings of the greater way.

In all my future lives

May I never live apart from my perfect Lamas.

May I bask in the glory of the Dharma.

May I fulfill perfectly every good quality

Of every level and path

And reach then quickly

The place where I become myself

The one who holds the diamond.

[Usual closing]

Nice job everyone. Thank you so much.

Class 4: The Eight-Part Posture

14 January 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Class 4

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course 3, class 4 on January 14th, 2024. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please.

[Usual opening]

Review Class 3

Thank you to everyone who submitted their papers and showed me their papers. I'm rejoicing in you.

Last class, we learned about those six conditions of the environment that helps us be successful in our meditation career. But more specifically for when we are ready to do our solitary retreat. We learned what the scriptures say about that, and then we adjust it to see how that gives us guidance for our daily practice. Which will help us grow the circumstances for a successful retreat when we're able to get to that point in life where that appeals to us and we can do it.

Of those six conditions, two of them were attitudinal environment, if you recall.

Those had to do with wanting to ditch life and never go back to worldly way of life, right?

No, Joana says no. It was two other attitudes that scripture recommends we cultivate. Yes, you can tell us what those two are?

Joana: One is having few needs or few want, to be satisfied with few things. And the second one is whatever you get to be satisfied.

Lama Sarahni: Nice. Easier said than done, but something we can cultivate. Thank you.

Then, of those six conditions, I'll just read 'em.

We know that we want to find a conducive place, and there were all those five different things that makes a place conducive. We won't go through that, five or six maybe.

Then those two attitudes.

Then there was the advice to give up many activities, meaning in retreat. But it helps as well in our daily life. As spiritual practitioner we reprioritize what's meaningful in life. Give yourself permission to make change when it seems appropriate to do so. Don't force it. But if we think, Oh no, no, I am not allowed to make change, subconscious block we won't be able to, even when we want to.

Then really intentionally avoid harming others in gross and subtle ways.

Lessen our sensory desires. The scripture says get rid of them. That's impossible, but lessen them.

Then part of that lessen sensory desire is loosen our desire for impermanent worldly things.

All that comes along with understanding emptiness and karma, working with our six perfections. It all is part of the spiritual upward spiral as we learn more, try it on for size, goof up, get better, see a little result, get excited, try some more.

Theoretically we're at the beginning of our career ACI three, although some of you started from the end. But don't be so hard on yourself to want to fix it all right now, you have until tomorrow.

Now, what was the source of the two attitudinal environments? It was a different text. Your quiz asked you for it, I think. Who can give me that?

Luisa: The Abhidharmakosha.

Lama Sarahni: Right, the Abhidharmakosha from Master Vasubandhu, 350 AD.

It's interesting because as we delve into these teachings more and more, and we learn the Middle Way, the Abhidharmas kind of get, Geshe Michael pokes fun at them right, in the Lam Rim. It leaves my mind thinking, oh, those teachings aren't as important, but that's my mistake. The Abhidharmakosha teachings are fundamentally very useful, very accurate, and Middle Way uses them as their foundation, even as they poke fun at their supposed misunderstanding of what karma and emptiness means.

Don't make my mistake and think when we hear something comes from the Abhidharmakosha that somehow it's not correct because it’s Abhidharma.

It is correct and we'll learn how to make it even more correct as we get more sophisticated in our worldview. But maybe we're not even Abhidharma yet. Yet.

Class 4

Tonight's class is the class about our posture for our meditation career. I'm going to blah, blah, blah through the class, and then our resident Yogini Tom has agreed to demonstrate for us.

I'll go back and she'll show us lotus and half lotus, and I'm going to coach her through showing us wrong posture, not wrong—not conducive posture and how to adjust it. And hopefully between the two of us you can get at least visual about what position we want to be able to put this body into, lock it into place.

It's really hard without having a hands-on person—your body there and saying this like this and this like this. And then you feel it, and then it is just up to you to reproduce it without the coach there. But we'll do the best we can because Tom knows that.

We'll do that at the end. This is a pretty short class if I don't get distracted.

Tibetan Vocabulary

Chu-gye lu-chu eight Dharma body posture

From Buddha Vairochana

Kang-pa kyil-trung legs in full or half lotus
Mik mi-ye mi-sum eyes slightly open or closed
Lu drang-po “dtranbpo” sit up straight
Trakpa nyam shoulders level
Go mito mima head neither tilted nor down
So-chu rang-luk teeth and lips in natural, loose position
Che ya-soy rang-luk “yu su” tongue in natural position up against top
Uk breath completely quiet

The topic we're discussing is called Chu-gye lu-chu. It means eight dharma.

Chu = Dharma

Gye = 8

lu-ju = body posture

The eight Dharma body posture. But what it means is the eight point body posture.

Very commonly we see a seven point body posture. I don't know the Tibetan for seven. The difference between the eight point posture and the seven point posture isn't in the posture, it's just in the completeness of the teaching. This eight point posture comes to us from Buddha Vairochana. It‘s often called the eight point posture of Vairochana. Vairochana is the Buddha whose name means emanating appearances—Vairochana. It's like this being upon becoming a Buddha made the pledge: I'm going to be a Buddha who specializes in what makes the appearance be what it is. So Buddha Vairochana and their particular practices have a lot to do with refuge and morality, vows. Because the seed planting from those behaviors create the circumstances of our world—both our paradise, our physical body that'll be made of light and the appearances that our compassion will take of our emanations.

Vairochana’s specialty is that, so it makes sense that included in his specialty would be the body posture, what you look like when you're meditating. Not because you want to look like a great yogi who cares about that? But because the way your body looks is how we can establish that it's in the right position so that the meditation can more effectively have its effect on our subtle body, that we're not supposed to know anything about at this point.

So you get taught this meditation posture and they don't tell you why. They just say, Because we said so.

Who's going to do that, Because we said so.

We get these little hints as to why it's so important to have your body in a certain position. It's all for our own benefit, so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel.

This eight point posture of Vairochana, the eighth point is a teaching about how to use the breath to shift our mind's gears. Not all the teachings on body posture include breath, because we don't think of it as part of a body posture.

But Vairochana wanted to make sure that we understood that it is part of the setup of our meditating being, is our body and how we breathe.

The eight points, we are going to talk about each one.

I'm just going to say them for the blessing of hearing them so that Tibetan will continue to be heard in our world.

Kang-pa kyil-trung

Mik mi-ye mi-sum sth about our eyes

Lu drang-po “dtranbpo” it's spelled like this, but it's pronounced like that,

like d and t mixed together, and b and p mixed together.

Trakpa nyam It's kind of fun to say. Sounds like a minion.

Go mito mima

So-chu rang-luk

Che ya-soy rang-luk “yu su” this soy for some reason is pronounced su

Uk I think you say that uk

Sal: I was just going to say they all sound funny.

Lama Sarahni: To Sal they sound funny, only because the way I say it.

Sal: No.

Lama Sarahni: Yes.

Kang-pa kyil-trung

Kang-pa means legs, our legs

Kyil-trung is the word for lotus posture.

Kyil is not the word for lotus, but somehow kyil-trung makes lotus posture.

Eight Points Body Posture

1. Sit in Lotus

The first point of our posture is to sit in lotus. They say full lotus is best, half lotus is okay. But if you can't do either one without being badly distracted, then do no lotus, which I think is funny.

There are lots of different no lotuses. And when we learn about the why lotus and half lotus are important, what they do for our body structure, we'll understand better how to decide which no lotus, like how to prop ourselves in no lotus that we can get almost equivalent effect as a lotus posture.

If we're first starting our career and we're still pretty young and flexible, then it's recommended that we do work towards full lotus posture.

With full lotus posture, your left leg goes up on your right thigh, and then your right leg goes up on your left thigh.

This tradition insists on that particular crossover.

In half lotus, it's the left leg that goes up on the right thigh, and then the right leg tucks in to stabilize this leg is going to need to be held up a bit to be here.

When we are first starting, we would do some kind of stretching exercise for our hips and inner legs, and warm the knees up before you try to put yourself in your lotus.

Then, if you can even get into it without your knees or hips screaming, just set a timer one minute and then undo them and go on with your meditation.

After a week of one minute, go to a minute and a half or two, just slowly, slowly build up. Because the structure of your hips and knees needs to adjust to be able to do this.

If you're 14 years old, you can probably sit down and go, oh, like this, right? And there you sit. Great. If you can do it, don't ever stop. Because once you stop, your body's going to go, You're not getting me to do that again. So don't stop. I made the mistake of stopping.

The reason is that posture locks our pelvis in a certain way so that our spine has to go up in a certain way that helps prevent us from curving forward.

When we have the physical structure aligned in that certain way, it allows the shift of the subtle body to happen more easily than if our physical body has got curves and tilts and strains. Then that reflects clogs in the subtle body and those clogs keep the subtle body, and you get this vicious cycle.

You don't do your stretches during your meditation session. That's sort of the point of a beginner's yoga Asana practice, is it is a way of stretching, systematically stretching the body in specific ways that help improve our meditation practice. That's why our tradition uses Asana. It's solely to improve our meditation.

This is the first piece: the legs in full lotus or half lotus or no lotus, but in a position that props us securely upright.

Geshela always says, Getting rid of mental afflictions is more important than looking right in your meditation. Especially at first, if we need to prop ourselves with a zillion pillows to keep ourselves upright, and in that position we can finally stop worrying about our knee pain because it's propped. We're better off doing that and over time you won't need those anymore.

2. Eyes with focal distance downward, unfocused, not completely closed

Mik mi-ye mi-sum

Mik = eyes, what we do with our eyes.

mi-ye mi-sum = not too wide and not too far

Lotus or half lotus posture, our eyes open—ideally, but not too wide and not too far, meaning we're not focused, we're not looking out our eyes.

Many people close their eyes for meditation. The problem with closing our eyes for meditation is we've got this central nervous system connection with closed eyes, with nap or sleep or rest, and our alertness starts to shut down. But then the same system says, eyes open, look there, look there, look there, look for danger.

We're trying to take control over both of those states.

This tradition says, train yourself to meditate with your eyes partially open, and gazing down in the plane of your nose. The scripture says, look at the tip of your nose. But it doesn't mean that literally because if we did that, we'd be looking cross-eyed. It means in the plane of your nose with your focal distance being 8 to 10 inches downward, but then unfocused, your eyes unfocused.

That takes a little bit of practice to find the way the gaze comes down without finding something there beyond or to either side and your eyes wanting to focus on that in order to keep them open. They're used to focusing on something. So again, it takes some practice, some training, some effort to get to this ability to let the light in but not the information.

If there are objects in that plane of focus, then cover them with something plain.

If you're sitting and there's something in your altar that even though you're focusing at this distance, but further from that distance is I can see my colleague text that's bright red and blue glaring at me. They would say, put a sheet over that so that you've just got a blank background where your eyes would be, where the background of your focus would be. Have it be blank.

Try, especially if you're starting a new meditation practice, try to learn to have your eyes open but unseeing. It's difficult. They will blink from time to time, but you'll get to the point where you're unaware of the blink. If you find that you just can't meditate with your eyes open, then close them. Close them gently with that high intention of retraining yourselves that closed eyes means withdrawing into my meditation. It doesn't necessarily mean falling asleep. You can see what the fallout of that could be. Well now I can't sleep when I close my eyes. Fine tuning that. Be very intentional. Now my eyes are closed for meditation.

Now my eyes are closed for sleep.

Our central nervous system is more pliable than we think.

Many of our Tibetan tradition meditations are visualizations. To visualize, it does not mean put the object of your visualization in front of you and stare at it. It means take a good look at that Thangka or statue. Then withdraw your attention from it and try to reproduce it in your mind's eye.

Doing that with your eyes closed is a whole lot easier than doing it with your eyes open. But the power of being able to visualize even as your eyes are open is verging on a siddhi, on a power. It's worth trying to see if you can divorce your attention from the light coming in and focus instead on this image that you're imagining wherever your mind's eye is. For me, it's like behind my forehead when I do get something, but it could be other places. Some people say put it in and back so that when you're visualizing it's back there, but that means I have to turn around and it's too complicated for me not being a visualizer.

3. Body in an upright position

Lu drang-po

Lu = body

grang-po = erect.

This erectness of the physical body. They don't really say too much in the scripture. It says if you're hunched like this in your meditation, it's both an indication of dullness and it's going to facilitate dullness.

Gravity does that to us as we get older. It does it to us as we try to sit in one position on changing for a longish period of time—whether we're watching a movie or meditating. Just sitting in one position, this is going to happen. Dullness happens.

On the other hand when we're really too rigid and forcing ourselves into what the straight back that we think we need, that it's unnaturally upright and rigid and it's distracting.

There's this ideal uprightness that we're trying to find and feel in our bodies so that we can place it there and it resists the gravity to some extent. It's parked in a way that we don't fall backwards.

Body erect.

The spine, our human spine has this natural curvature. It curves concave at our hips, it starts to go kind of straight at our waist, and that our thorax, our chest, it goes convex. Then at our neck it's got to go concave again, and then our skull sits on top.

All of that is designed so that we can balance as one leg comes off the ground when we walk. It keeps us upright side to side and it keeps us upright front to back.

That natural curvature tends to get exaggerated over time.

Some people, the curve at the lower back gets exaggerated and when it gets exaggerated, the thorax gets too straight.

When the thorax gets too straight, our neck has to kick forward to keep us upright.

More commonly, that lower back curve goes the other way, because of sloppy sitting posture. When the pelvis goes the other way and that lower curve goes flat, then the upper part of the body curves forward and then the neck has to come way back.

Those two mistaken curvatures is what we're trying to straighten out. But it's impossible to get the spine stacked one on top of the other perfectly. That's not human to be like that. But that's what we're trying to approximate is like a column. Our vertebrae, a column straight up.

The way we get to that position is that we imagine there's a rope from heaven that goes right down through the top of our crown. It becomes our spinal cord and then somebody up there takes a hold of that rope and pulls us up. That pulling up brings your chest up, your chin in your tummy in, your pelvis down.

But when we say to somebody, raise your head, they do this (throwing her head backwards, chin up). They don't automatically do this (leveling chin to ground).

Tom's going to show us so that we can at least see the difference between I'm sitting upright, and I'm sitting upright.

Erect.

4. Shoulders level

Trakpa nyam = shoulders are level

If you notice people, if you carry your bag on your right shoulder, then when you're at rest, you look like this (right shoulder lifted up).

If you carry it on your left shoulder, you look like this (left shoulder lifted up).

It is very easy to be a Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and say, You must be right-handed because you…

Clues the way our body goes.

Again, if we sit like this, my thorax is curved, my neck is curved, one butt cheek is higher off the chair than the other. It's not that we couldn't meditate like this, but the subtle body isn't going to be able to make the adjustments that it would be if we can get ourselves, get that shoulder down there, get this one up straight, even though the body will rebel at first until it feels how good it feels to get that alignment put together.

Shoulders level. Shoulders not rolled forward, but also not rolled back.

Yet we often say, okay, sit in meditation, roll your shoulders back. But see, you can roll your shoulders back and your head stays in the wrong position. That's not what they mean. Whereas Tom will show you, when we do this, our shoulders roll back naturally because our sternum comes forward. Shoulders level, level this way, but level front to back as well.

Once we get our physical posture placed, these teachings say, park it there and don't let it move just because there's an itch, just because, oh, my knee is aching. Sit it out for a while.

If the knee continues to ache and it goes on to hurt, break off. Don't hurt ourselves. But our habit as sissy humans is the instant it gets uncomfortable, we shift to adjust it. The instant there's an itch, we've got to get rid of the itch, so we scratch.

This tradition says if we keep up that habit, we will never be able to get into that deep withdrawal from our physical senses that we need to in order to meditate well enough to gain any Aha’s about our topic. So we make the determine at the start to do our very best. Of course when you do that, everything will itch and everything will ache until you say, I'm ignoring it, you're not going to get me. Then surprisingly, it changes.

5. Head neither tilted up nor down

Go mito mima = your head, your head not too high (mito) and not bent down (mima).

We don't want our head doing this and we don't want our head here. (Let‘s her head fall down and rise up too high)

Sometimes in meditation, because the energies are rising, without our control that will happen.

This teaching says when you realize that your position has shifted ever so gently make the correction. You can correct without really stopping your progress if our awareness can just make the adjustment gently.

Go mito mima.

6. Teeth and lips in natural, loose position

So chu rangluk

Rangluk, Those of you who did course 13, remember rangluk. It means our position. But the words really mean a natural position, which is a little bit arrogant. Isn't it? Rangluk—Our position is the natural one. I think that's funny, because our opponents got a rangluk too, right? Yeah, ours is right, rangluk.

So chu = teeth and lips

Teeth and lips and natural position. But then they tell us what natural position ought to be. You want your lips closed when you meditate so that your mouth doesn't dry out. But you don't want it tightly closed. You want it relaxed but closed.

Then your teeth are just, when you close your mouth, your teeth aren't really touching, are they? Mine aren't. They're not clenched, they're not slack. But however your teeth go when you put your lips together softly, and then ideally you put a little smile, just a little smile.That little smile helps loosen the side channel knots there at the upper curve.

It's helpful commonly when people are trying hard to focus on their object, just like when we're trying hard to do anything, our face goes (making a tensed face). Because we're working so hard. It means we're working too hard. That tension that gets set up in our face is clogging the channels. It's a result of clogged channels and it's contributing to clogged channels. It's one of the things that as we're reviewing our posture check from time to time at the beginning of our careers, check your face. Is it concentrating hard? If it is, give it permission to release. Putting the little smile helps it release somehow.

7. Tongue in a natural position

Che yasoy rangluk

Is what to do with our tongue.

Che = tongue

Yasoy = top teeth

The words mean tongue, top teeth, natural position, which isn't very meaningful. What it means is that your lips are closed, your teeth are natural, the back of your tongue is relaxed, so the back of your tongue feels down towards the floor of your mouth. But as you come to the front of the tongue, the tip of your tongue is touching the back of your front teeth, and up towards where the front teeth meet the hard palate.

It feels funny at first to put your tongue in that position because it feels like a fully relaxed tongue ought to just be laying down on the floor of your mouth. Which is a practice to learn to do that helps the central nervous system. But it's not the position for the meditation that we're being taught.

The back of the tongue is down comfortably and then as it comes forward, the tip rests against the back of the front teeth up towards the top of the palate. You feel the palate a little bit, and you feel the front teeth a little bit. Then as your tongue relaxes, you don't have a pointy tongue anymore, you got a round tongue. Then that roundness sort of fits in along your upper teeth as the tongue relaxes.

Relaxed in the back, touching up in front, that supposedly dramatically reduces the amount of saliva that we make. We want to reduce the saliva because when you're getting in deeper and deeper meditation and you have to swallow, it will pop you out of your deep meditation because it is so loud to swallow.

When you're quiet, swallowing is loud and harsh, so you want to reduce that possibility. Somebody figured it out that it helps a lot to have your tongue up there. Not completely, but it helps.

8. Breath completely quiet

The eighth point of the posture, which isn't postural at all, but it's uk, your breath. From the Abhidharma Kosha description of meditation posture, what to do with our breath. This tradition says breathe through your nose. If you're having allergies and you can't, obviously breathe through your mouth instead. But, get your allergies fixed so that you can breathe through your nose and train yourself to be comfortable breathing through your nose, even not in meditation.

Then this tradition also says, when you count your breath, learn to make the habit be: I start my count on the exhale. Habitually, somehow when someone says, let's count our breath, we take a big inhale. This tradition says when somebody says, let's count our breath, exhale. It feels the reverse of what's natural.

Exhale, inhale is one breath.

It's planting seeds for future practices.

Exhale, inhale breath number two.

This tradition says we use the breath as the object, as our trigger to tell our mind our awareness: It is time to meditate. We do not use the breath as our meditation object except at this beginning stage.

They say, you focus your attention on the sensation of the air coming out the nostrils, and practice holding that awareness through the exhale and the inhale without losing your attention to the breath.

They say, do 10 breaths without losing your concentration on the exhale inhale.

When you've done 10 without distraction, that's when your mind is ready to shift into actual meditation. Like taking the car from drive to neutral before you put it in meditation. Car doesn't work there, but you have to get it to neutral first.

The breath will help us bring our mind to neutral.

This tradition for this purpose does not do anything with he breath. It breathes. We pay attention. By paying attention, the breath slows down and we're just following that breathing slowing down. As we follow the out and the in will get more balanced. We're not making it happen, we're just watching it.

When we get to 10, we shift to our meditation object.

Now, there's a problem there, because it's very difficult to get to the 10th breath without honestly losing our focus on the breath.

So 1, 2, 3, whoops.

1, 2, 3, 4, whoops.

1, 2, whoops.

You do that some number of times until maybe you can actually get to 4 twice and then you say, okay, I'm meditating. That's fine. But don't skip the effort to turn the mind to the sensation of „My breath is my tool to shift gears“, and then use it that way.

Physiology says, focusing on the breath for the lengthening of the exhale and the balancing of the exhale inhale triggers our vagus nerve to take over a sympathetic nervous system and that triggers: rest, restore, renew state of physiology. Which means our high alert fight or flight is down, and our peace and tranquility is up.

Just focusing on the breath can do that for us.

Just to help us understand why this tradition has said, Just use the breath to shift gears. It really does work.

Luisa: I have a question regarding the breath. When I meditate, when I start to do the counting the breath, then I really need to control. Like to go down in my mind I have to control my breath. I am aware I am forcing the breath to come in, then pause a bit, then exhale. Because if not, I feel like when I just try to watch it, I feel like I am not getting enough air, and at this point I start to feel short of breath. So I need to control it. Is that bad?

Lama Sarahni: I don't think it's bad in the sense that, oh, that's going to block you from any kind of good meditation. But I think it gives you some insight into you and your relationship with your relaxation mode versus in control mode. So I wouldn't say stop doing it, but you could explore why? Why? And let it shift.

Sal: I have two questions. I mean, I heard Geshe Michael say one time about the breathing, because I relate to what the lady before asked and he said that you can try to control the push out of air, so the pushing out of the air and try to let the breathing in take care by its own. So, you breathe out and that you can control. Then the breathing in, the body is going to do itself. So kind of let go of the breathing in, and then take care of the breathing out. That's what I heard.

And then the question I have is Number 6, rangluk. Rangluk. Good luck, bad luck, rangluk, whatever. What was that again? I'm sorry, I wasn't clear about what that was.

Lama Sarahni: So chu is the lips and teeth. So that's the closed lips and the teeth, not clenched but not open.

Sal: Was that the natural position you were talking about?

Lama Sarahni: Right. Tongue natural position.

When Geshe Michael is teaching that: breathe all the way out, give it a little push and let the inhale take care of itself, he's not teaching this. I mean, he's giving it as the preliminary, but he's doing it for a different purpose.

If we've already been meditating for a while, and we know how to shift gears, you could make that modification in your breath at the beginning. He's planting seeds in our minds for future practices where we do use the breath as a tool for something else. That's different than this setting learning or training ourselves in the eight point posture to make it so automatic, that all we have to do is focus on the sensation of breath and our mind goes, Okay, time to meditate. In which case it doesn't take 10, it takes until you feel like the mind makes the shift.

Sal: I was saying that because of, in the same explanation, I remember he's saying something about that you can get hooked up to trying to control the breath and that's what I heard the other lady say.

Lama Sarahni: Right, right, right. Good. So that would be a medium, a halfway (…)

Tom: Luisa, I would say, it takes practice to learn to observe the breath rather than control the breath. One of the breathing that we do in yoga, the normal breathing through their whole asana practice, called ujjaye breathing. The feeling is just you would see it normally do whatever it is you want and you would just observe in and out going in, notice the belly moving in and out comfortably. Don't overthink the breath. Then just start giving the sense through your throat. There is a little bit of a restriction happening as you exhale through your nose, your mouth is shut, you do the same thing as far as the teeth and mouth, but as you exhale you hear a little bit of exhalation and it causes a lot of calming. So you're just breathing normally there is a light restriction in the throat and it's very relaxing, and if you practice it very with time, it would become very, very easy and that is very meditative, that type of breath. It is very controlled, but it is just awareness of the breath going out. So you just inhale, and then when you exhale, I'm going to try to make it louder so you can hear me,…

I don't know if you could hear, but there is very light restriction that you feel just in the throat. You would hear yourself, but it's very, very light. So it's calming the nerve system because you're just doing this basically. Slowing down the breath. You don't have to control it. It sounds just like a wave, like an ocean wave. So if you think of how waves, the ocean pushes sand very gently. It's not just like forcing its wave, it has to push it very gently to create new path. So inside the body, all the channels move through that very gently.

If you feel like the need to control the breath, make it a little sound as you exhale. It will calm you down and it will help you focus and clear the chatter in the mind.

Lama Sarahni: Nice. Okay, let's take a little break and then Tom will be our demo angel for us.

(Break) 63:40

Ale: May I share some rejoicing

Lama Sarahni: Please.

Ale: The past couple three courses that I have taken with you, like the Lam Rim course and then ACI1 and ACI2. Eric always ask me, what did you learn? And the only thing that I could remember was: Change your behavior. And I don't know what happened or what seeds changed, but when I asked about how to keep clean the house, something happened that I did change my behavior finally. And I realized that what I have to change with my behavior and the meditation practice is that to keep my mind clean. It wasn't about to keep the space clean or the house clean, it was more my mind. So I just want to say thank you because I changed my behavior.

Lama Sarahni: Yay. Thanks for sharing.

Luisa: When we start the class, you do this small visualization and then we do the refuge prayer. Then you always say bring someone to think is hurting and so on. So when we do the meditation, our daily meditation, should we also do that? Like kind of bring an intention to the meditation or only at the end when we dedicate then we say this is for X, Y.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, if you find that method that you've been using with class gives you a clear direction and a heartfelt sense of why you're meditating, then I would recommend you use it.

Luisa: We do it in the stage of at the beginning taking refuge and Bodhichitta. There?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, do it there. Thanks for asking

Monica: Teacher, can I ask a question?

Lama Sarahni: Yes please. Monica.

Monica: You mentioned that this practice of the 10 breaths is one that you should do and until you reach the point where you are fully concentrated on the breath, then you can move forward to meditation. But in this lineage and with ACI and YSI, we study a lot of meditations and I mean we're very blessed in that sense. But I was wondering if it would be best to actually be very process driven and just focus right now on trying to fully focus on the 10 breaths, and then start moving on with other types of meditations.

Lama Sarahni: Geshela has very often said, if we say I'm not going to move on until meditation, until I get that 10 breaths, we are likely to never get to the meditation. Because it is really so difficult to stay on 10 breaths. So I don't know why they say 10 breaths, but then after about five you move on. I think it's the period of time, the period of time it would take to do 10 breaths, nice slow breaths. It's about two minutes, a minute and a half. And so really it's more like focus on your breath, use it to adjust and check and clarify and get ready. And after about two minutes, three minutes max, go onto your preliminaries.

Your training will happen over time more than: here's the first step and I'm not going to go on, I get it. It is more important to get into the seed planting activity of the preliminaries than to spend the time on the breath—in this tradition. Right? Now, other traditions have other focuses, other advices. This tradition says, feel free to learn those others. Feel free to practice those others. But don't mix them with this one. Yet we see as we get our future training, it does start to get mixed with other stuff. But let's be as clear as we can, assuming this is the beginning of our career, let's plot along, plot along carefully and focus on those preliminaries because of the seeds they're planting. And the breath will come, the improved breath will come as well.

Monica: Thank you teacher.

Sal: It's a little bit of logistic. I can make it to this class on Sundays at seven, but I can‘t make it on Thursdays at seven. Is it the same time? Yes. I can make seven on Thursday.

Lama Sarahni: Yes.

Sal: So we'll submit the homework for the Thursday class later. I haven't had a chance to watch that recording yet.

Lama Sarahni: Okay. You are on the email list, you should get access to, however that works. You'll owe me two homeworks and quizzes by your Thursday class, right before Thursday class, both: the one from before and the Sunday one that you missed with us. You'll have done by the next Thursday that you attend. That's our agreement. Okay, good. That's fine. Thank you.

Demonstration of the 8 Point Body Posture

71:27

Tom, can you set your system such that we can see you go into and come out of Lotus, and then no Lotus, or Lotus and half Lotus. What I'd like them to be able to see is how your thighs, how they end up being positioned on the floor.

Then if you can show us what a wrong lotus would look like—if somebody's hips weren't opening enough and their knees are up off the ground, how impossible it is to actually do that. Can you do, don't hurt yourself, but do wrong Lotus?

Tom: Yes, I'll move. So you see front and side that works for everyone. That'd be helpful. Is this good as far as how far you can see me?

Lama Sarahni:

I think so. Can everybody see her body, her full body? Yes. Okay good. Yep.

Tom: So what would you like me to start, like half Lotus?

Lama Sarahni: Can you sit just cross-legged on the floor but turn to the side so that we can see you, your spine a little bit more. Wait, just do ordinary three-year-old cross leg. Do you know what I mean? Cowboy style? No, not even lotus. Just nevermind. I'm trying to show people, see how easily she gets into lotus.

Tom: But this is a very wide lotus, I can‘t sit in that.

Lama Sarahni: Lift yourself up and turn yourself 90 degrees so we can see your spine. Okay, so now adjust your lotus to where you're in lotus for meditation.

Lama Sarahni: Left leg comes up. See how high it's up on her thigh?

Tom: So this is my right leg on top if we're doing left

Lama Sarahni: We want left leg on top. Sorry,

Tom: Yes. So the right leg come first and then the left. So my feet, I don't know if it is

Lama Sarahni: This one says left leg goes up first and then right one goes up, but let's leave it.

Tom: Isn't the left leg, wouldn't be the left leg locking.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, left leg goes up and then the right, but that's all right. What I'm trying to show is, can you see how her thighs are from buttock to knee are flat on the ground? Can you see that? Yeah.

Now look at her bottom and how the curve of her lower back goes. It goes in and up. So now to try to flatten your lower back backwards, try to tuck your buttocks in.

See this, how that's gone straight and how that's made her chest cave in and her neck curve back? She will not be able to hold that position. Her legs will cramp.

So now go back to what your normal lotus puts you into.

See how this curve is? Then, when this position is placed, the fulcrum off the sits bones sends this spine straightening so that the thorax can come more flat than it ordinarily would be. That allows the neck to come more straight. So now we're going to make a little bit of exaggerated adjustment so that you can see what happens.

Tom, let yourself slop forward just a little bit. You have to kind of force it right? Do you see that? Now if there's a rope coming out of her crown and somebody's going to pull straight up on that rope, okay, I am pulling up on your rope. Look what happens. See what happened to her chest? Her sternum came up, and by the sternum coming up her chin tucked in and by all of that happening she's got this open channel going from heaven to earth, technically down the front of her spine. So slop down again forward and then do that rise up from the rope pulling your head up.

Now let your sternum cave in without curving in too much. Yeah, she's so used to doing this she'd get quite even do it wrong.

But now she's locked into that position and because her ground is so solid with her thighs on the floor and then the two sits bones solid, she doesn't have to work at keeping herself upright. When she gets locked in, her t's pulled in, her chest is rising, her head is rising, not like this, but raised from the occiput. The body will lock that in very sweetly, very nicely.

Then the hands, I don't remember mentioning the hands, it comes as part of the shoulders level. This tradition says, you put your left hand with the back of your hand down on top of your two legs up there. It goes right into the space of your legs. The right hand comes down on top of it and then the two thumbs curve up and touch each other so that it's called the meditative hand posture.

It's very comfortable when you're in lotus posture, because your hands will sit right down on your feet and your hands will be at the level of your navel very naturally. Do you see that? Elbows are out a little bit to get the thumbs to touch, and that allows this air circulation very comfortably. You don't have to hold them out there at all.

It's very nicely propped, because you've got your feet up there.

If in half or no lotus your feet are not up there, or you're in the looser lotus because your hips have to be wider, then you put a pillow there, so that your hands come down on the pillow. Or if you find it, you can't put your hands that way, it's okay to leave them out on your knees.

But again, we're learning new habits at the beginning of our career and so it's not comfortable at first, but there's a reason to learn to do it.

And that's one position that allows the energy connection of the subtle body to be enhanced, I guess would be the right word.

Now she's in half lotus so that just one leg is up and the other leg, the one that's down can be the foot can be underneath the knee of the one that's up to help hold it up. So we would do half lotus because we don't have sufficient hip flexibility for this thigh to be all the way down on the floor.

Can you move back towards your plant by about two inches, Tom? Yeah, because we can't quite see your thigh against. I can't. There, now we can, good.

In half lotus if our thighs can't be all the way down. Our lotus is not solid.

So a half lotus may mean that there's one thigh that's a little bit higher so the knee doesn't come down. You use your other foot to prop it up. But you can guess what's going to happen over time: that foot's going to rebel. It's going to feel like it's falling asleep because it's got pressure on it. Although we can still train ourselves in half Lotus, Lotus is more like a staging ground for getting to full lotus rather than being, Okay, I will stay at half lotus for the rest of my life. Because your foot will block you at some point from going any deeper.

Sal: Can we see from the other side also?

Lama Sarahni: Okay, yeah. Turn your half Lotus and let us see the other thigh please. 90 degrees the other way. There you go. Good.

Now that thigh is all the way down, do you see?

If you need to, you can prop a pillow under your knee that's not all the way down to keep the pressure off the foot. But then when you look at her, see, although she's got this solidity now based on being supported, that there's this bit of a tendency to be a little off balance. Her pelvis isn't solid on the ground with half Lotus, the way it was with fill Lotus.

We think it's our knees that block us from Lotus position, but it's not our knees, it's our hips and buttocks that need to be really loose, so that when we open our legs up, the thighs can drop all the way down to the ground, to the floor. When we open up our knees like this, then Lotus won't work unless we've got them propped.

You saw her doing Lotus with no cushion at all.

(84:50) There's another method of doing half Lotus. Where now you're up on a cushion, your knee and leg are forming the solidity onto the floor and you have this triangle.

Here's another version. That one I would suggest would be a starter but not a long-term because it would leave you feeling like you're a bit up in the sky.

We're working on having a posture where this is supporting us and then our leg that goes underneath is also firmly on the ground. We would need a cushion that's high enough to allow our knees to come down to the ground, whether we're lotus, no lotus, half lotus.

Do you see how her knees are all the way to the ground?

If she was on a cushion that's too high, then her weight would be on her knees not evenly distributed.

If she was on a cushion that's too low for the openness of her hips, then her knees will come up and her back will curve back and she'll be out of balance, forward to back.

We want to find a cushion that supports our leg’s ability to get that solid position of the knee, the thigh, knee and leg solidly on the ground, both legs evenly. It will probably be a cushion that's higher than you expect at first.

Then as our body gets used to this position, you'll find that that high cushion is actually pushing too much weight onto your knees and it's time to lower the cushion a little bit.

I remember Geshela gave this teaching about, he couldn't bend over and touch his toes, so his yoga teacher gave him a telephone book. Do you remember those? The could bend over and touch the telephone book and the teacher said, pull a page out of the telephone book every day. By the time that there were no pages left of the thousand page telephone book, his hands were on the ground.

Same with our posture and our cushion. Start as high as you need and then over time lower it.

Sal: Are we going to talk about karmically doing this?

Lama Sarahni: Karmically doing this is what I'm doing right now. Thank you very much. Is what Tom is doing right now. Thank you very much.

Now show us no lotus. There are lots of different no lotuses, but this no lotus would be just tuck one foot in and the other foot next to it. It doesn't even have to be up over on top of your leg, but they're tucked in. You're almost sitting on your heel. Not quite right like that. Now see, her body doesn't even like it because her knees are up off the ground, you see? So, are you on a cushion or are you flat on the floor?

Tom: I‘m flat.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. So flat, no lotus doesn't really work for most of us. So now put either your bolster or the cushion under you and no lotus for us. (88:42)

See? Now her knees and legs are down on the floor and that gives her that solid uprightness. Turn down 90 degrees so we can see your spine doing that.

See there? She's got the upright again.

Now take the cushion away please. See now how her back has to overcompensate for not being up high enough to allow her legs to support her?

That would tire her out and become distracting.

Put the cushion or bolster back in and let's have a look again.

See how it takes her legs so that now she's got weight bearing and weight bearing and weight bearing. That allows her to come more effortlessly upright so that she's automatically being pulled up by the string.

This is hard. If you have a mirror, you can do it in front of the mirror and see what you can get. But maybe find somebody. You want to, Can I help you with your meditation posture so that you can then help me with mine? And explore what you can find. Thanks Tom. That was really helpful, for me at least. I hope others could see we've got a couple of questions.

Luisa: If to comparing for I if I am understanding correctly. So the idea is to reach the full lotus. When I am able to do full lotus, I don't need a cushion.

Lama Sarahni: Right.

Luisa: Until that time I need the cushion to get that balance. But ideally I should be able to sit flat in full lotus and this will be the meditation position?

Lama Sarahni: Right. Ideally. Nice.

Although look, your right knee is up off the floor and so if there were a day that her right knee is up off the floor, she would tuck something under there rather than forcing herself to stay with the knee, hanging up there in empty space.

Then very likely she would just warm up a bit and then she would go into her lotus with both thighs flat like she was showing us before.

When we're sitting down, we do want to have some kind of mat or blanket or cushion that we're sitting on, even if we need no meditation cushion because you are using Lotus. You don't want your legs to be on a cold hard floor just because of the coldness of it, it will become distracting.

It's fine to have a nice blanket or the Zabuton, the big square cushion that your other goes on. It is for comfort and safety. If your bones of the fibula, those bones that stick out at the base of your knees, if those sit hard on the ground for a length of time, there's a nerve that goes right by there. You'll pinch off that nerve and it can cause permanent nerve pain from that. So something softer along that knee can help prevent any of those weird: „How did you hurt yourself? I hurt myself meditating.“ stories. It doesn't have to happen.

Rachana: Thank you for this. This has been extraordinarily helpful. I have a question, apologies if it was already answered, but there's so many varieties of shapes of cushions and fillings of cushions, and everybody's bodies are different. I know, but is there any suggestion?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, find the one that suits you. This one we call the plug because it's big and fat and round and it filled with?

Tom: This is buckwheat, so it will adjust to your body. If you're tilting, so when going to start, if you're starting using this and even if it sit by the way madrasa, you can start by tilting on it. Or even if you're going to the full lotus or halfway, you can tilt back and forth. So you're learning to find the height versus the other ones that they're like the Japanese ones, they're like hard cotton or whatever fabric it is and you kind of stay.

Lama Sarahni: They don't conform.

Tom: So try to find a buckwheat. You can also sit if you have foam blocks, like this is soft, doesn't hurt my butt and I can kind press, but you can over tilt in it. But it will really make sure that your spine is erect because you can't move too much in it. But it's soft and doesn't hurt my sit bones.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, good, good. The buckwheat hulles over time break down. Yes. In a sense that's good because over time you don't need it so fat. Hopefully it will break down at the same speed that you need it to break down. But eventually it breaks down so much you either need to refill it or you're swishing cushions. But it is the traditional, in our tradition, to have the buckwheat hulles because of this moosh ability of it.

Tom: I have regular bolster and I'm not able, like I just stay. So you have pain in your knees or something. Like I have a long poster I'll show you quickly. This is my yoga room, so everything's here. So one, you can use that under your knee. If you really have knee problem in a long way, both of your knees will be protected. (95:00)

Lama Sarahni: Nice.

Tom: But if you're sitting on it, it feels a bit more rigid. Because you're just kind of staying in the same, your pelvic floor doesn't shift too much versus in here and you're not as high. If you're practicing yoga, if you're doing different things, this is great to have. But you see I'm already pretty low in my practice so I can stay in it, but I don't feel as supported on my spine long-term. This, I get more support on the spine. Now I can sit in Lotus for about 20 to 40 minutes without having pain, but some days they're a little uncomfortable.

Lama Sarahni: Right. Good. So now there are some that are firm, like the bolster, but you've seen them, they're shaped kind of, they curve around and then they're pointed. Those are designed for people whose hip opening isn't sufficient for their thighs and knees to get onto the floor. They've got this wedge that serves to support the thigh down to the knee. Some people need that support. But as Tom says, it's like they're so solid that you're sort of locked into that position, and even as your body's ready to adjust, the bolster won't let you. The cushion won't let you.

It‘s helpful, like Diamond Mountain has several different kinds of cushions there, that if you ever do get a chance to go, try 'em all out. Because you don't want to go buy six different kinds to try them. You need to go someplace where they are and then find the ones like, Ooh, this one's really nice.

But then also give yourself the opportunities to try something else as well. I used bench for a while, and then the buckwheat hulles. Then my buckwheat collapsed and I needed more, but I couldn't get buckwheat, so I bought some crack corn from the pet store. The crack corn worked really, really well. But it was so heavy that my cushion became not portable anymore. But that's still my favorite. So be creative.

Tom: I would say if you're in the US, TJ Max and Marshall's, those are soft yoga blocks. Those were 5$. So as an investment, it's not that bad. If you already practice yoga, you could use it. Sometimes they actually have bolster, but that depends.

If you don't have knee pain so much, but you're very tight, it's mostly muscular and it's mostly your fascia, so it's like your deepest muscles. If it's maybe in the lower back or your thighs, I would recommend while you're sitting, try to grab massage ball, like a silicone massage ball or a golf bowl. So this is made out of a silicone. This is just a golf ball. You can put them in easy pose underneath your thighs and just very lightly, even if you're just practicing, not doing your meditation, but just for practice, this will help open those deep muscles that goes around from the foot to the knee, to the thigh and to the pelvic floor. It will help you. And they are cheap.

Lama Sarahni: A little financial release. Good. Yes, Joana. Thanks Tom.

Joana: I usually get some tension between the shoulder blades in the other parts of the back, and I was wondering which parts of the posture do I have to adjust or try to take care of better? Because then it's getting too tight and aching.

Lama Sarahni: Right. My guess is that your cushion height isn't quite right, because you're having to hold yourself in that upright posture instead of the balance of the pelvis holding you upright in that posture.

So whether your cushion's too high or too low, I can't know, but it's very likely that that's where the source of the difficulty is. Because the tension is coming from having to work hard, and when you've got the cushion adjusted properly, you don't need to work hard to stay upright. Yes.

Sal: So a couple of things. First, can we get some links to the gear that she was showing? And then the other thing is since we have her already demonstrating all of the different types of sitting positions, would it be okay for us to interview her a little bit about how? Like what's the feeling that she's getting from sitting in such and such place so that we could,… Because when we're meditating, we're in it, right? So now that we're not in meditation, we could get in it, and explain or try to have some feedback of what the feeling is to sit up straight and sustain the position, and all those things.

What does it feel like for you when you're sitting for a long time in that position or even for a little while? Is it something that you feel like everything's lined up, you feel like you're locked in? Does it feel like.. How does this affect your breathing? If you're breathing the way that we're supposed to breathe, is the breathing affecting your having to struggle to maintain that position, or is it moving you, rocking you back and forth, or your heartbeat or whatever?

Lama Sarahni: I do know, and I can't answer for Tom, whether she's willing to take on the task you just asked, that will be up to her.

But I can say that all of your questions, my answers to those questions would be, this is what happens to me, and you would need to explore to see how & what works for you. But it would give you the confidence to trust your own experience.

When we get into our deep meditation, the point is that we become unaware of the body and what its needs are. Ultimately, the more able we get to the point where I don't know what my body's feeling right now because it's not part of my experience anymore. You've got a good meditation posture and it doesn't matter whether you're standing on your head or got one knee up at your ear. If you can reach that level of not aware of your body, that's what we're going for.

Tom: I can answer as well. I think you guys talking about the green cushion, that it's too high. It is a bit too high for me, and I think it's maybe a year old now. That's how quickly became too high. There wasn't a lot of option physically for me to where to go and try and test. I know that in Diamond Mountain they have one that it's half and it's smaller and they're very expensive. So I wasn't really sure if, and I didn't have anything to try. That is a target meditation cushion and it was like 20 $. So I figured if I buy a bag of rice and sew it into a bag, it will cost me about the same, and that's where I figured I'm going to start. Knowing that it's buckwheat, I can always remove and adjust to my height.

I haven't done it because I do sit on the ground and I use this for other practices in this height. I can lean on it, which again, if you lean and twist by the way, will help you open the back and your body gets molded to the cushion. I have different ones.

I actually sleep on a buckwheat pillow. I don't sleep on a regular pillow anymore because it pushes my neck too high, which bothers my meditation.

So for your other questions. What I feel is, one, I think you should practice yoga because it will prepare you. Not just for the meditation, because you're asked in a practice, your physical practice that you're doing your posture, will start becoming more meditative as they are.

The focus, your question that you're asking about breath and focus will start appearing when you're practicing. You learn to breathe softer. For me to go into the sitting is, I already have done the preparation. Which in yoga, meditation is the next step after the asana. We don't see the yoga, it is the physical, as the ultimate goal. So for me it is from sitting, it's starting to just kind of bring the energy inward.

I'm starting to settle down, it's feeling the body on the ground, it's feeling more grounded on a physical and emotional level. I feel more supported. I can relax. That's just the lower part of my body I would say.

Then it's starting to release tension in the belly and the lower back through my breath. I breathe in and out through the nose. So just noticing where that feel. How is that moving? Is it too shallow, too heavy? Am I out of breath? Am I out of energy? Am I falling asleep? You will feel it because you're going to fall forward or back.

Usually for me, I will tilt forward also, that's my physical anatomy. I have more rounded shoulder. I will tilt forward if I'm tired, so I will need to start being aware of my belly, which is pelvic floor as well.

Then, you continue feeling an energy lift, rise up, or I will just tell myself to notice energy lifting through the spine. If I have any kinks, this is a good time to make any adjustment and release any tension in the back. With time, you'll be able to also release it with your breath. Literally move your breath to specific vertebrae and you'll hear it cracking and snapping, which is very nice.

And I'm continually thinking about raising up. So I have the idea of lifting through the crown of your head or someone's pulling me through my hair. So there's this lift. Again, shoulders are very wide, so your heart is open. It's easier to breathe as well just because your whole sternum is more lifted and there is space in the belly to expand in and out. So there is ease in the sitting. There is no this force thing.

If you're still in the forcing, come back to the legs or the pelvic floor. Right now I'm just sitting on the ground. I'm just sitting.

The only pain that I feel is just my ankle bone hitting the ground. Which doesn't bother me that much because I sit like this very, very often. For example, in a class like this, for almost two hours I'll sit on the ground. With time, you get used to. Even if it's not full lotus, I'm used to the joint relaxing and being more open. Because also just continually forcing the leg. That's not what you're trying to do. You're trying to stay in the pose and be relaxed. You see how my shoulder is just open? If I'm doing this, your butt is literally clenching your pelvic floor. The front is just. So I'm continually asking, I'm noticing my breath. Like I was saying to Luisa earlier, I practice ujjaye breathing. So even if you don't know the technique, just as you inhale and as I exhale, I try to slow down the breath. So all you're hearing this, I hear a little bit of throat. That's how it sound. So then I start telling myself, make your breath louder than your thoughts. Physically and emotionally, intellectually, this is what I start tapping into.

I can then again move the shoulders. Sometimes I have shoulders and injuries. I will wake up a little like this. So I roll the shoulder up, back and down. So it will just, your trapeze muscles will start pulling you down. So your spine is lengthening, continually lifting the ribs so I'm not caving down. Then the scapula is kind of pulling you again from tilting to forward. This is just the anatomy, right? So I'm here at this point, and there is a sense of movement comfortably and then ease.

Usually it's then the neck. We all have that phone neck doing this (crunching forward like watching down on a phone screen). And sometimes in meditation it happens to me too where there is this lift.

So to start from moving from here is just think, parallel to the ground. So you want your chin to be parallel. You don't want it to be here or here. And then maybe I tuck the chin inward. So you see how my spine just lengthened and my torso lifted.

So again, I'm in ease and I don't have any tension in my shoulder because there is lengthening that happens through the natural spine. There's no field of misalignment. The body is just stacked naturally and there is no pain. And then continue feeling like there is a lift. So at this point there is no pressure and there is a lot of ease. And I can just sit and relax and listen to my breath.

At that point, I will probably start doing account of, as I exhale, breathe and the inhale. So exhale or inhale or exhale, whatever. However we practice, we practice on the exhalation first. That will be my one.

So again, it will be inhale, exhale, very long and very soft.

At this point, I'm starting to bring the focus of the eyes.

So it's very hard to bring that attention to the eyebrows or between the eyebrows where we want to practice.

Practicing yoga helps because you learn to find focus at looking at something, especially balancing poses. But one of the things I've learned to do is finding a point to gaze on, something steady, even if it's the wall, and feel as your breath is piercing through that point. So it's going direct. It's so, so focused that your breath is just becoming this loud and clear, and you're getting this horse covers blinders, however you call it. So this starts to happen to your mind.

If you stay in that breath, maybe 10 breaths, I do longer breaths, because my (?) kicks in. Then there is this feeling of starting to bring that point inward, and it stays right there. You can very lightly just shut your eyes. Not fully, but there is a sliver of light happens. It takes practice. By then I'm able to start releasing tension from the face, if that makes sense.

But it is practice, especially to the level of the adjustments that I'm talking about.

It's a lot of doing this for me at the beginning, kind of readjusting or cracking. There is a huge difference, I can tell, you when I practice a full, really intense practice, not intense in like intense poses, but I'm fully in my practice, no phone, no one's talking. I didn't stop a physical asana. It's a lot faster to just go and sit. And then also just the asana practice itself become very, very meditative versus the beginning if I'll just try to sit. You have to work a lot of kinks, the breath has to really settle. For me a lot more. So I hope that gave you some idea.

Lama Sarahni: Thanks Tom. That's a great advertisement for taking up a yoga asana practice training. Well done. Thank you.

So ACI course 3, class 4 with a great additional information from yogic tradition. Hooray. Your goodness is wonderful.

[Usual closing]

Thank you again for the opportunity to share.

Class 5: The Five Problems of Meditation, and the Eight Corrections (part 1)

18 January 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Class 5

Welcome back. We are ACI course 3, class 5 on January 18th, 2024.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please.

[Usual opening]

Last class we learned the 8 point posture of Vairochana, but if we do a review of it, it'll be the whole class again. So just remember the eight points. Got 'em?

Before that we had learned about the preparation for our career. We'd learned about the conducive environment, both physical and mental. And then we learned about the posture, the eight point.

This class and next class are about the mental techniques—still not the object. We're still learning about how to meditate. We're not doing it yet.

The mental techniques teaches us about what happens in our mind experience as we try to focus single pointedly on an object at demand, on the object of our demand, and for the length of time that we demand.

We all have the ability to single pointed focus, but we don't have the ability to turn it on and off at will.

It comes as a result of the object, not from the object, but because of the object or our frame of mind, or we feel physically especially good. But we don't have it at our backend call. And that takes training.

When we have a meditation career, we will encounter five problems, five difficulties that we will come across. Everybody does.

If we don't know about those five problems, we either won't recognize that it's something to be expected and we'll think there's something wrong with us.

Or we won't even notice that we have a problem and we'll think we're meditating well when we're not meditating at all.

It's really amazing to have this kind of instruction that is preemptive. We learn what's going to go wrong, and then we actually also learn how to apply something. How to apply an antidote for when we do find ourselves having that particular problem.

Then it's up to us to actually apply the antidote. Of the different antidotes, find the one that works for us and be willing to find a new antidote when that one seems to stop working—if it ever does. That's part of the practice.

But without knowing this upfront, we would have to reinvent the wheel and that would take three times 10 to the 60th, countless eons to get where we want to go. So thank you to this tradition that makes the lists and the outlines and all that dry stuff that we don't like. It's all designed to make it easier for us, even if it seems harder to do it that way.

Alright, so this class and next class is called the classes on the five problems and eight antidotes for meditation.

Let me do my share screen. I feel like I'm forgetting to tell you something and it'll pop up at the wrong time.

Vocabulary class 5

Nyepa nga Nyepa = problems, nga = 5

Nyenpo gye Gye = 8, Nyenpo = corrections

Problems Antidotes

1. Lelo

1. Ting-nge-dzin la depa

2. Dun-pa

3. Tsun-dru

4. Shin-jang

2. Dam-ngak je-pa

5. Dren-pa

3. Jing-gu (jingwa gupa)

6. She-shin

ne-cha

sel-cha

ngar-me

4. Du mi-je-pa

7. Drimpa hlupa

5. Du jepa

8. leave it alone

Nyepa nga = the five problems that we will encounter

Nyenpo gye = the eight corrections for the five problems

Now in these five problems, the first one is called lelo. Even if you've never heard the Tibetan lelo before, and I asked you, What do you suppose lelo means?

Very likely you'd say, oh, lazy. Because it just feels that when you say it.

Lelo, it means laziness. But not lazy, as in you'd rather have a lemonade.

But lazy in the sense of I just don't feel like it. I'm just not interested enough to fit it into my life. It's just not wanting to.

Of the 8 corrections to the five problems of our entire meditation career, 4 of those 8 corrections happened in order to overcome the 1st problem of meditation.

That tells you how strong is the first problem, and how it takes effort to overcome that.

Once we do, we have a rejoicable, because then our meditation career has only 4 more corrections to be made. You're halfway there. Not really, but you get the idea. Let me just show you, I'm not going to take the time for you to write them all down right now. So this first line of words is the problem of meditation:

Lelo
Dam-ngak je-pa
jing-gu
du mi-je-pa
du jepa

Then my second column is the antidotes, the corrections that we will learn about applying, and we'll go through those as we get there.

These five problems and eight antidotes were originally taught by Lord Buddha during his career, five 550 BCish, but not in one teaching. A little bit over here, a little bit over there, a little bit over there. So it had to be compiled, and then explained and fine tuned and it et cetera. By the time we get to the Gelukpas with their outlines and lists, this is what we have. But it's not the Gelukpas making anything up.

The scripture says, if you are traveling through an unfamiliar country, area, and you don't know who your enemies are, well how are you going to protect yourself?

You're going to bump up against an enemy who's going to do what enemies do before you have a chance to go, oh, I shouldn't have even been here because you're the enemy. If we don't know, we put ourselves in harm's way without even knowing it, and then it's too late to do anything. Whereas if we know what our enemy looks like, then we can keep an eye out and we can go the other direction when we see one coming at us. I don't know why they use that kind of analogy, except that we all have this natural inclination to protect ourselves, and we wouldn't ordinarily think of needing to protect ourselves from errors in meditation.

But if we think about the importance of meditation, an ineffective meditation that we think is a good meditation is worse than walking amongst your enemies. Because you think you're doing something that's going to help you reach your goal, and in fact, you're not.

So important to learn these five problems and then apply ourselves to learning to recognize them, and then doing something about it once we see them. You really can't get it from just hearing the words, it will take some time with your meditation efforts to be able to go, Oh, that's what she was talking about. Gupa.

Oh, that's what she was talking about.

I'm hoping in our post ACI course 3 classes, I'm going to try and walk you through some of those experiences. I'm not sure if I can do it or not, but we'll try.

Problem 1: Don‘t feel like it

Lelo is the first problem. It means I just don't feel like it.

At the beginning of our career it's, I am not interested enough. I don't want it enough to get out of my warm cozy bed and go sit on that cold floor. So lelo is just for whatever reason avoiding it, not wanting it. It comes out of not recognizing the benefits of an effective meditation practice. Because if we don't recognize how it's going to help us, there's no reason to be interested in it.

Meditation is not the kind of thing that your parents or your teacher, or even your heart Lama would say, You have to meditate in order to succeed in the world so you can take care of me when I'm old. It is not like that.

Meditation is something that we ourselves, it will occur to us, Oh my gosh. I can't stop recreating this world of suffering for everybody until I can get a glimpse of where everything really comes from. And the only way to get a clear enough glimpse of where everything comes from is to be in a deep state of meditation.

We can get glimpses off the meditation. We gain our renunciation from experiences off our meditation cushion—even before we're meditating towards.

But when we have reached that state of heart, There is something wrong with this picture, and we go looking for what's wrong, we meet teachings that say we can explain to you what's wrong. But until you get deep, deep inside what you think is you, and see what the real you is all about, it'll stay on an intellectual level and your change will be too slow.

The only way to get into the real you is to learn how to withdraw your attention from all this outer you, and poke around in there, and find out what's not there that you thought was there until we find it directly.

Laziness means you just don't want to go to the effort.

These four corrections are what we cultivate in order to bring us from that state of mind „I don't need that. I don't want, I don't want to bother.“, to the state of mind of, „Oh man, I want that“. Because now, if we really want something, we are willing to do what we need to do.

It has to be a really want something, not a, Oh, maybe, maybe not.

It needs to be this strong, strong urge.

These are the four antidotes that we cultivate to overcome our lelo.

1. Antidote: Feel attracted towards meditation by recognizing its benefits

Ting-nge-dzin la depa

la depa = faith

ting-nge-dzin = single pointed concentration

We're calling the meditation practice career that we're starting a career in training ourselves in single pointed focus on demand.

This first antidote to our laziness about meditating is to have faith in single pointed focus. The words say that, but what the words mean is not just blind faith in meditating, but having come to this recognition that me and my world is broken. There's nothing I can seem to do that will bring anybody, including me, any kind of lasting happiness and I'm sick to death of it.

What does that remind you of from Lam Rim and course 1? Renunciation.

As our renunciation grows, our faith in meditation will be revealed, meaning our recognition of the power of training, our ability in single pointed focus on demand. The teachings explain that in order to progress from suffering being to the one who will stop the suffering of all beings in your world, we need to pass through those 5 stages of our spiritual career that hinge upon 5 realizations, things that become real for us. That shift from old belief to new belief, to new realization happens in a deep state of meditation.

We grow the seeds, we grow the intellectual understanding, but in some deep direct experience in meditation, this shift happened.

We know those five paths, don't we?

The path of accumulation, accumulating enough disgust with sansaric life, to want something different. Renunciation isn't something that we can sit down and decide we're going to get. We can't really push it either. But the teachers always say, Don't worry, just live long enough. Your renunciation will come. Some final blow will get you and you'll go looking for your spiritual path. It apparently has already happened to all of you guys, because here you are. But, to gain the realization of the path of accumulation, which is what moves us to the path of preparation, something needs to happen in a deep state of meditation. So, path of preparation is all the training and learning and experiencing that is moving us along understanding emptiness and dependent origination—the marriage of karma and emptiness. We call it the pen thing. Well, we've all got that too. We could argue we're all on path of preparation, which means we have shifted from accumulation to preparation.

But if we're not deep meditators, we're on those two paths in an intellectual way, not yet in an experiential way. Which is not a bad thing. But for those to become realizations, something has to shift within us, and that shift happens in a deep meditation.

Then, we take our path of preparation and what it is preparing us for is that experience of our path of seeing, experiencing directly the fact that no thing and no person, no self has any nature of its own. That too can only be experienced in a state of deep meditation.

Isn't it possible that you could have the seeds to just suddenly go into a deep enough state of meditation that you see emptiness directly?

Yes, sure.

Is it likely? Have I been that saintly in this and my previous a hundred million lifetimes?

Maybe, maybe not.

It takes cultivation, it takes training. It's like seeing emptiness directly would be what would come after the four-year-old sees her first gymnastics competition and decides, Mom, I want to be a gymnast. She starts training and she trains for hours and hours and hours a day even during school, et cetera, et cetera, and that young woman goes on to be an Olympic gymnast. It took her seeing it and wanting it badly enough, and then it took all the effort necessary to train there.

Could she have said, Mom, I'm a gymnast and started doing all that stuff?

Yeah, that's what virtuosos are. I can play the piano like that. It says the three-year-old, and they do. But few and far between.

So the 1st antidote to not really wanting a meditation career enough to put in the effort to make it is to grow this faith in it. But it's faith born of recognizing its benefits— not just faith because someone said, You should meditate.

When we see that it's through our meditation career that we will reach the tonglam, which then puts us on the path of habituation where we are on the conveyor belt to the end of all mental afflictions and all suffering, if that was our motivation. All the way to Buddhahood, when we really get that, then it's like, Oh, meditation is a pretty important piece of the puzzle. I'm interested in it. That's ting-nge-dzin la depa.

I see it's a critical piece.

2. Antidote: Decide you want to be a good meditator

Then dun-pa, we train our dun-pa.

Dun-pa = we want it

You can see how antidote number one is the major hurdle. You see its advantages. You still are thinking, Oh man, there's no way I can do it. It's going to take hours and hours and maybe I'll fail and all those things.

But our dun-pa is, we keep revisiting its benefits until we decide: I want that. I want that.

It doesn't come automatically, because yeah, when you're feeling good, you do want it and you do get out of bed. But then there are other days you don't feel so good and it's like, oh, my la depa isn't strong enough for my wanting it to override the wanting to stay in bed.

It sounds simple. You see the advantages, you want it.

3. Antidote: Making the effort, trying hard to get good at meditation

Tsun-dru, the third application of the antidote to grow to be able to apply is tsun-dru. It means making the effort, trying hard.

Again, like the little girl. She could have gotten to her first gymnastics lesson and said, oh no, this is too hard. I don't want it after all.

That is likely to happen when we're first growing our career. It's like, oh, I'm not getting anywhere. These instructions must not be right. I can't do it.

Our effort slacks back into lelo.

So these really do take some concerted effort to cultivate into full-on antidotes that we have already, that we have then ingrained within us.

Tsun-dru is make the effort, willing to try daily, whether we feel like it or not.

Geshe Michael often says, When you make yourself do your session when you really don't want to, even if you think that session is the worst one you've ever done, you have made great progress. The seeds of making yourself do it when you don't want to do it is really, really powerful when we are talking about the virtue of growing our meditation practice.

4. Antidote: Experience physical and mental pleasure and ease that comes from meditation

The 4th of the 8 antidotes is shin-jang.

We've heard the shin-jang word before, related to finding, reaching shamatha. We'll talk about it later. Here it's not being used in that way.

Shin-jang means practiced ease. This means the final antidote to our laziness is when we've reached the place where our meditation session goes smoothly and pleasantly. It's not perfect, but it's become easy and pleasant. Like the little gymnast who has trained and trained and trained to the point where she just sets her mind on her routine. She steps onto the balance beam and her body and mind just does it because she's so well-trained.

Now, we're not going to get to the point in our meditation practice where we go mindless, right? She doesn't go mindless either.

But the piece here is that when it gets easy, it becomes enjoyable.When it's enjoyable, we'll do it whether we feel like it or not. So you can think of the shin-jang antidote to laziness is when your practice becomes enjoyable.

That's the actual antidote to laziness. Clearly it takes these other three to build the enjoyability of our meditation practice.

Got it? The first problem is just not wanting to do it.

The first four antidotes is bringing ourselves to the point where it's so enjoyable, we do want to do it.

This enjoyability will not come without making the effort of daily practice. 10 minutes a day to start with, add one minute a week. We've heard that.

Irregular practice won't bring on the enjoyability of it.

Problem 2: Forgetting the instructions (losing the object)

Once we have our regular practice and we're enjoying it enough to do it every day, then the next problem we will encounter is dam-ngak jepa.

dam-ngak = instructions or advices

jepa = to forget

So the second problem is called ‚forgetting the instructions“. But it does not mean I've sat down on my cushion and I forget what to do. What this dam-ngak jepa means you've sat down on your cushion, you've done your preliminaries, you've called your meditation object to mind, and then your focus of attention goes to lunch. Or it goes to the meeting that you have, or it goes to that nasty thing that person said.

You don't have your meditation object there at all. It's really losing the object, but they call it forgetting the instructions. I don't know why.

Losing the object, it's the first problem of meditation, because the first thing we do in meditation is call up our object and try to focus on it. The second thing that happens is our mind will jump off of it. Because our mind is like this puppy dog. It doesn't know the advantages of sit, stay, and it thinks it's being tortured when it's told to sit and stay, and so it just runs off. The correction, the antidote to cultivate is a state of mind called drenpa.

5. Antidote: Remembering/recollecting the object

Drenpa = remembering or recollecting

The actual literal words of the Tibetan, if I understand correctly, it means to tie something to a stick. You've got the stake in the ground and it's got a rope on it. The rope is a certain length, and you tie your puppy dog mind to the rope, so it can never get further than that from the stake. We're talking about our puppy dog mind and we're tied to the stake of our meditation object with a rope that's right up against it. Drenpa means to have your mind tied to the object, focused on it.

It's a quality of our attention, this drenpa, and we're training our mind to have it for drenpa to arise as we sit down and call up our meditation object. It doesn't happen automatically. We need to train it by calling up the object, recognizing the mind has popped off, and then recollecting the mind to the object: Sit, stay.

Then it runs off again, get it, put it back: sit, stay.

As we do that, our state of mind of drenpa gets stronger and stronger.

A slow drenpa is one that you've been thinking about lunch all the way to the third bite of the sandwich, and your mind goes, What? I'm not on my object. Back.

As our drenpa gets stronger, drenpa kicks in at picking up the sandwich, and then it kicks in thinking about the sandwich. Then it kicks in just as it's starting off towards— you don't even say, Lunch. Starting off towards it and then back.

Full-on drenpa, it'll never, You see my little mind coming off my object. Full-on drenpa, it'll never get past that. Because drenpa is so quick to kick in.

Drenpa needs to be full-on before we will not have dam-ngak jepa as a problem anymore. It comes with seed planting practice.

Once our drenpa holds our mind on the object, now the problem that will arise is the problem called jingu.

Problem 3: Mental dullness or agitation

Jingu is the contracted word for jingwa and gupa.

Jingwa = dullness

Gupa = monkey mind, agitation

This mind, that's huiiii.

When we were still cultivating our drenpa and the mind jumps off the object, that has a different word, that's called drowa. It's jumping off the object, is the worst kind of agitation, the biggest kind of agitation.

Once we have full-on drenpa, the agitation that we get won't kick us all the way off the object, because our drenpa is so strong. But the agitation will be this something in the background that wants to pull you off. When you're on your object with this quality of mind that wants to jump off, but drenpa is holding it on, it becomes, it's a distraction. It's not so distracting you lose your object, but you can't get any deeper in the meditative concentration as long as this nervousness of mind is there. Gupa.

Then JINGWA is dullness, which also has two forms: obvious or gross dullness and subtle dullness.

Dullness is again you're on your object, because your drenpa is full on, but you're on your object and you're just losing interest. Not enough to pop off the object, but just so familiar with it, you're just starting to get dull.

Really, really, really gross dullness that loses drenpa means you'll fall asleep.

Gross dullness when you're still on the object means that you're just dumb, dull and stupid, staring at the object in your mind.

It's not a state of mind that will help us gain any kind of insight.

It can actually be fairly comfortable, because our mind's not itching to get off the object. It's just kind of bored with it, and we can think, Oh, I'm doing okay on my object. It's still gross dullness.

When we apply ourselves to strengthening up our dullness, the tendency is that we crank up the energy of the mind and then it keeps cranking, and we slide over to agitation. Then we correct the agitation and we slide back into a little bit of dullness, and then back and forth and back and forth. The training in meditation is to be able to follow that back and forth until the pendulum comes still. Not in any one session, it won't work like that, but over the course of our career.

The agitation has so gross an agitation that you actually lose the object. It then has a level of gross agitation, but you're still on the object.

And there's a subtle agitation where you're still on the object.

Dullness similarly: really, really, really gross dullness. You lose the object completely. When you're on the object and you get grossness, it means you're just slow and lost interest.

Subtle dullness though is a quality of mind where you're on the object, and you are alert and bright, but you're missing this quality they call ngar. Ngar means intensity.

I relate to it as fascination.

In holding our mind on the object, there's three levels or qualities of mind as we're holding the object that we're training ourselves to recognize, and adjust as we need.

6. Antidote: Watchfulness (sheshin)

The antidote they say to our dullness and our agitation is applying what's called sheshin.

Sheshin is the act of a part of our mind, checking our mind on our object to see is there dullness, is there agitation?

We're on the object. We have drenpa. It's not needing to check anymore, because it's full-on. Now, sheshin needs to pop up every now and then and check: dullness, agitation. Sheshin state of mind doesn't fix anything. It's just the, Geshela calls it the carbon monoxide alarm. It just sounds the alarm that something's wrong. Then you've got to fix it.

3 Qualities of Sheshin

What sheshin is checking is these three qualities called necha, selcha and ngarme.

Necha = fixation. It means the stay aspect of our experience. Is our mind staying on the object?
Slecha = the clear aspect, called clarity
Ngarme = the intensity level of quality of mind on our object.

When sheshin peaks to see what's going on, it's looking at fixation. Which we have to have fixation to even be looking at our mind at this point. Fixation will be there. Sheshin is going to look for clarity and intensity.

Classical example: Holding a glass of water

They give us a classical example. I think it comes from Pabongka Rinpoche.

He says, suppose you're holding a glass of water, to just hold the glass, is what we mean by the fixation state of mind. You have your object and you have your object in mind. You're holding it.

Slecha, clarity, means you're holding that glass with a certain amount of concentration so that your mind, your attention on the holding the glass has to be bright and clear.

Then the ngarme, long for ngar is the intensity with which you're holding that glass.

I use this analogy or this experience, you know I wear all white and somebody hands me a glass of cranberry juice. Say the cranberry juice glass is half full, so I accept it from them, I have fixation. I'm just holding the glass. I know I'm holding it and it's half full, so I'm bright and alert about having. But I don't have to be hypervigilant to not spill it on my white outfit. I am holding it and I'm clear about it, because if I get sloppy holding of it, I'm going to spill it. But fixation and clarity.

Now suppose they poured cranberry juice right up to the brim.

Now I need that ngar, that intensity state of mind to be able to drink that cranberry juice without staining my outfit.

We're not talking about how hard I hold the cup. We're talking about the quality of my concentration on what I'm doing, on my object of mind, the cup of cranberry juice that I don't want to spill on my white outfit.

To have fixation at all, our recollection has become firm. When we have fixation, as time passes, our mind will either get dull, sloppy about it, losing some interest. Or as we try to hold it with greater and greater clarity and intensity, it slips off to agitation.

I could be holding my glass of juice and I get so nervous about not spilling it, that I spill it. That's gupa. Ngar pushing us over to agitation.

The sheshin state of mind is saying, Look, dullness happening. Look, agitation happening. Look, no clarity. Look. Then it's up to us to fix it.

So fixation, clarity—not how clear the image picture is, but how bright eyed and bushy tailed your state of mind on the object is. And ngar, how fascinated are you? Again, I‘m trying to recognize my own states of mind:

Fixation, I'm on the object.
Clarity, I've got curiosity about it. I'm bright about it.
Ngar, fascinated. If we're fascinated with our meditation object, are we likely to lose it? No.

We want those three states of mind.

Drenpa makes the fixation.

Sheshin helps us check:

Do I have clarity?

Do I have intensity?

Do I have dullness?

Do I have agitation?

Within the clarity, within the intensity.

Now, gross dullness and subtle dullness, the differences between them are explained using this analogy of holding the cup.

Just holding the cup is fixation, holding it tightly is clarity, holding it tightly with concentrating on it—like so full of cranberry juice—we have intensity.

Gross dullness is when we have fixation, but neither intensity nor clarity.

We're on the object, but just vague about it, uninterested.

Subtle dullness is when we're on the object and our mind is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and curious, but we don't have the ngar, we don't have the fascination.

It's a really pleasant meditation experience to have fixation and clarity, and that's the problem: that it feels like a good enough meditative state of mind that we leave it there. It will end up being a blocker. Because without that intensity quality that we're able to recognize is not there and then bring it up, without that we won't be able to reach the platform from which we can turn our meditative object from the object to the no self nature of the object and be able to hold that absence.

It takes that quality of fascination, something about that quality that allows us to overcome these other two obstacles and have the antidotes in place so that we can move through those nine different meditation levels.

Okay, let's take a break. I actually don't have very much more for this class, but let's take a break anyway and come back. I'll finish it up and do, we'll do questions and then I'm going to stop my screen share and pause the recording for the recording.

(62:50)

We still have a little bit more about sheshin.

Sheshin, the word is usually translated as watchfulness.

Drenpa is recollection and sheshin is watchfulness.

Drenpa, recollection, we've cultivated to be turned on the whole time we're meditating.

The watchfulness state of mind, in using it to adjust the quality of our meditative concentration on the object, it can't be there all the time. Because it would cause a distraction.

Sheshin, we learn to have it pop up, check, and then step aside.

Pop up, check, step aside.

But we hear it explained like that and it's like, here I am on my object. Here I am on my object. Drenpa is keeping me there.

Then I'm supposed to make sure that it's clear and ngar.

If my watchfulness has to pop up to check to see if this is clear or ngar, it's like, where is it? Does it come from outside? To me that sheshin is a big distraction, because to turn my mind to sheshin takes me off the object.

So somehow, what we're trying to cultivate is this ability to be on the object and still something arises from time to time that just adjusts. It's not like it goes dullness there, it just adjusts, tightens up, loosens down, without losing the object to be able to do.

That watchfulness, as it becomes skillful on our cushion, it becomes very skillful off our cushion, because it's the same state of mind that's watching our choices of behaviors. We can also call sheshin mindfulness off the cushion, and it's mindful of our ethics. Not just be really mindful of eating oatmeal, but mindful of my next response, my next reaction versus response. Ethical mindfulness.

It grows out of our sheshin. So all of this is talking about an on cushion practice that we're cultivating. But when our drenpa, our recollection on our morality is full-on, then our sheshin has this beautiful ability to be on all the time where there's always a part of us that's a little bit aware of what our next choice is going to be.

With that awareness, we can make different choices. We're off automatic pilot.

Cultivating this on our cushion helps us cultivate it off cushion. Cultivating a more conscious ethical choices in behavior grows our ability to cultivate our on cushion practice. The two go together in the cultivating of this drenpa and sheshin, recollection and watchfulness, or mindfulness.

They say, every five minutes or so, check your quality of mind. I had real trouble understanding what sheshin was, more trouble understanding what it was than doing it or not doing it, I realize in retrospect. But I didn't know that I was doing it. So I decided in one retreat it's like I'm going to set a timer and a kind of timer that I could just push it and it would reset itself. I thought, okay, three minutes or something like that. And within, I don't know, a day or two, I would be on my object with my whatever, and then the instant before the alarm went off, my mind would pop out. Then I'd tried it again. Okay, let's do five minutes. It would pop out right before the alarm went off. I realized I trained myself in the wrong thing.

I trained myself to stay on the object for three minutes, not to take control over staying on. It just backfired. So although the instructions usually say, Set a timer or something to train your mind in sheshin. That backfired for me. Maybe it won't backfire for you, but I don't recommend it.

Find some other way to be able to check: Am I dull? Am I agitated?

Those of you who have done meditations with me, when I'm the leader, I play your sheshin and randomly I just say, Check. The ideas for you to check: clarity, ngar, dullness, agitation, and make the correction.

By doing that for you has helped me, son of a gun. Funny how that works.

Find some way to check your own mind.

We're not starting our meditation career yet. We don't even have our object yet.

If you already have a meditation practice, then revisit these a little bit: Do I really have drenpa? If I don't have drenpa yet, there's no need to work on your sheshin, because you are not on the object long enough to get dullness or agitation.

You can have a dull state of mind on and off your meditation, but that doesn't qualify as jingwa and gupa. That's back here in lelo.

Luisa: Just to know, I haven't reached that level, but when you, for example, are at this level where you have the drenpa, and you are checking with the sheshin the agitation and dullness, do you check again your posture or this is already forgotten? You know what I mean? If I am there and then I check, I am agitated, and then do I check with the head up or with the head done or this is I don't care anymore because it will distract me.

Lama Sarahni: What we're going to find is that we'll learn what adjustment to make. T They'll be like, here's the first thing you try, and if that fixes it, that's all you need to do. But if you realize you did that and it didn't fix the problem, then you need to do this one. And checking the bodily posture is like third or fourth one down the row. You may need to get there, but you're right, it takes us completely off the object and out of the meditation to check our posture.

Luisa: Okay, thank you.

Lama Sarahni:

Again, reaching the experience of the direct perception of emptiness is the portal through which we go on to stop all mental afflictions forever, and thus, aging, illness, death and forced rebirth, for ourselves and for everyone.

Once we reach our path of seeing as a Mahayanist, they say that your full enlightenment is probably seven more lifetimes or less. That versus 10 to the 60th eons, not lifetimes, eons, that's a big selling point for seeing emptiness directly.

That would be why our tradition says we would want to cultivate a powerful meditation practice, because that experience of the direct perception of emptiness can only happen in a deep state of meditation. To increase its likelihood, we cultivate deep states of meditation on a regular basis until we're good at it, which comes from liking to do it and liking the result that we're trying to get from it.

It becomes common sense, really, when we have our goal clearly in mind and what we need to achieve our goal, then we set about to train—just like, I want to become a concert pianist. I need to learn. I need a teacher. They will tell me what to do. I will do what they say. I will practice, I will practice.

If we get to the point where we hate it, well then don't bother. You're not ever going to be a concert pianist if you hate playing the piano.

All of this, reaching the antidote to lelo, which is, Wow, meditation is fun and cool and I just want to do it, and everywhere I go, I want to sit and meditate there. From that, from the power of that, then we can slide into this actual effort of learning to move our meditative concentration ability through those nine stages, that we're going to learn about couple of classes from now. These five problems, eight antidotes are the trainings, like learning the chords on the piano. We can't skip them, so we'll learn, we'll learn more.

Q&A class 5

(1:17:06)

Okay, that's all I have for this class.

When Geshe Michael was first giving these courses, he had students who were also in the group of students that Geshe Michael was studying from Khen Rinpoche. So those students saw him as a co-student. When they got together at each class in the hotel room or wherever they were, they were arguing with him about things that they wanted clarified, or I don't know their motivation. They just didn't seem to be being respectful and letting him teach, but their state of mind was, they didn't know he knew anything more than they did, because they were all studying together.

So it is a little understanding, but in those audios, those arguments go on for a half an hour sometimes before Geshe Michael finally gets to class, which is why we end up with a class like this where it's just half the material. Then the homework was written based on what was given in class.

I don't like to go on and give you two classes at once, because then you'll have two homeworks at once and I don't want to do that. That's why we're ending early and once we get past the point where was the circumstance, we won't be ending early anymore. Once we get to wherever we were before that group that came in the middle, I don't think we ever ended early in course 13.

So I'm taking, wow, 30 minutes and putting it in my minutes‘ bank. I won't use it all at once, I promise. Any comments or questions? Otherwise we'll just close up.

Siau Cheng: Hi, Lama Sarhani. I have two questions actually. The first question is, you mentioned about the five problems, and for each problem you have some corrections. Am I supposed to look at all this thing in sequence? It means the first problem actually comes first before the second problem, and the second problem can't be even the solution also one by one in stages.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. Okay. Although it's not that you fix them once and for all, but you work with them. You can't work with dullness and agitation until you're on your object long enough to get one of them.

Siau Cheng: Okay. Thank you. Then my second sheet question is that I have some difficulty trying to distinguish between drenpa, and also the first stage of sheshin that means the fixation. They both seems to be the same thing, you're fixing or the object, right? Are they in different stages to some extent?

Lama Sarahni: Once your drenpa is full-on, that is what holds us on fixation. Once we have fixation, that's when sheshin needs to kick in, to see whether our fixated state of mind is clear, fascinated, dull, or agitated.

Siau Cheng: I see. Thank you.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. Good. Thank you.

Lian Sang: Lama Sarahni, can I ask question related to last class?

Lama Sarahni: Okay, I'll do my best.

Lian Sang: Last class, we talked about the eight point posture, and how important is it for us to doing it in that sequence that you have taught us?

For example, normally because for me to memorize, I actually go by like, oh, okay, I start with my eye, then my mouth, et cetera, then I go down shoulder. But I know the sequence is different. So how important is it to go by that sequence?

Lama Sarahni: I think if you're teaching somebody, teach them by the sequence, and then if you're sitting down with them to walk them through putting their body into meditation, I would get them in their position and then start from the top and work your way down, just as you have said. Your practice can be the order that works for you to do the same way every single time. But when we teach it to somebody, the order is for some reason, I don't know.

Lian Sang: Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Luisa: For this, when we are starting our meditation at the very beginning, so we are going to lose the object every time. Like the first, I don't know how many years, but anyways, we'll lose the object anytime. So this power to bring the mind back, is that also sheshin or not? At the beginning when I am just, oh, I'm thinking of lunch, and then I bring the mind back. This is not sheshin?

Lama Sarahni: No, that's drenpa. That's recollecting. Drenpa.

Luisa: Okay. But I thought the recollecting is when the drenpa is when you already reach that being on the object for a longer time.

Lama Sarahni: That's when you have a hundred percent drenpa. So when we're losing the object, our drenpa is not a hundred percent, and how quickly it kicks in. So here I am thinking about lunch. I'm on my third bite, drenpa. Finally my mind goes, whoops, and reels it back in. Over time I'll go, whoops, a whole lot faster.

Drenpa is growing. It's learning how to cultivate drenpa until it's finally full-on, which means we don't ever go to whoops anymore.

Luisa: And Lama, I have a personal question. For example, I have been studying for many years, but it was always intellectual understanding. And then this year out of the blue I will say, then suddenly I decided I'm going to meditate. Then I started to meditate every day and I'm doing the what you say, I make the effort, but I cannot point a situation, a moment, something that triggered this Aha that then—I was aware of the Aha that drove me now to sit and meditate. Then it makes me feel I cannot explain the cause, you know what I mean? Then it turns into random. Now it's randomly, I can do it. So if I want to help someone else to get to this point, then I cannot tell, you know what? I did this and this and this, and then I planted the seeds, and then now I see them meditate. It is just like, I don't know, it's just somehow I am so committed now that I'm doing it, but I cannot point it to what?

Lama Sarahni: Because enough yak poop hit the fan. So you would say to somebody, I just couldn't meditate and I couldn't do it, and life kept happening to me, and I was just getting more and more unhappy, even unhappy with the teachings. And then I don't know, suddenly enough yak poop hit the fan and I had had enough, and I could then sit down and meditate every day. It accumulated.

You don't need a tit for tat. You don't need a, I did this and I got that. I am so sorry that everybody hears Geshe Michael say that.

Luisa: Or you want something to say, Ah, look, I had this Aha, and then for example, when you taught us that Death practice, and then what you said, this changed my life. And then I was just thinking in the moment I didn't feel this, Okay, now I am different. But I don't know now, it was part of the whatever, now trigger this. I am doing it, and I am so impressed of myself, because I was always postponing meditation. Like, no, this is so boring. Okay, thank you.

Lama Sarahni: That's how it works. That's how karma works. Seems out of the blue, but it's not. It was accumulating and finally got over the threshold, thank goodness. Yay.

Right. What else?

Tom: Favia wrote the message in the chat box.

Lama Sarahni: What'd she say?

Tom: She wrote, I don't recall you explaining the last two words.

Luisa: But it was when you were explaining to Siau-Cheng, she wrote that.

Lama Sarahni: Oh, sheshin. drenpa?

Siau Cheng: No, the last two problems, is it?

Lama Sarahni: Oh no, we haven't done 'em yet. They're coming next class. Yeah. Stay tuned.

Siau Cheng: So Lama Sarahni, could I ask another question when nobody's asking question? This regarding the counting the breath. When we count the breath, are we focusing on the single point, for example, the tip of our nose and feeling the air coming out and in? Or are we following the air going out and coming in? We're following the flow of the breath. Which one are we focusing on?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, if you have someone who's leading your meditation, they will tell you what to focus on. And there are different reasons for focusing on the breath in different ways. Then within that, everybody has their own preference as well.

So that tells us that you too can come up with your own preference.

When we understand the purpose of focusing on the breath isto, we're trying to create a trigger, and that when we do that, this will happen right away, kind of like hypnotism. We can get hypnotized, like suggested that when you, like I did one, you just have to visualize 3, 3, 3, and your body goes into relaxation. But only because it's been suggested and it's been practiced, and then it becomes automatic.

So to focus really sharply at the sensation at the tip of the nose, they call it the tip of the nose, but we've got two of 'em! And they never say, At the right side or the left side. They just say, focus really sharply on the breath at the tip of your nose.

And it's like, well, which one? Right? It drives me crazy. Breath meditation drives me nuts. But pick one and find that sensation, and then park your mind on that sensation. Call it the breath, and somehow that sensation changes in such a way that you can count one. Technically you're not single pointed on the breath. If it's like, okay, that whole sensation, it's too big a object to say, I'm really on the breath for 10 without losing it. So, it's really this part is designing some method that works for you repeatedly, where your mind withdraws from other sensory input down to just this sensory input that seems to also include counting. And then that triggers a complete turn inward at the end of your counting. That's the idea of using the breath to count. Because it's there. It doesn't really take any effort to visualize it. You've got the sensations. But it's a method of shifting gears. But that means we need to do it the same way every single time until that trigger happens automatically.

And when you reach that, it's like, ah, three breaths and it's enough, and you're sunk down inside. So you teach the puppy dog to sit just with a hand signal? And then pretty soon you don't have to say anything, you just do this. So it's like that. Yeah, thanks.

Tom: The monk today gave the four noble truths. He explained it and then he explained that they practice the exhalation to remove all negativity, and then as they inhale positivity. So he said that that takes a lot of time. So they start with counting, but they want to start seeing negativity removed with every exhalation and then positivity come in with every inhalation.

Lama Sarahni: Nice. Yeah.

Lian Sang: Lama Sarahni, on the so-called breath meditation. Siau Cheng and myself were discussing. So what you mentioned just now, if I had any focus on my sensory, like example, the breath touching this part of the nose, technically it's still sensory, right?

Lama Sarahni: Yes.

Lian Sang: So, technically by definition meditation is supposed to be a mental object. So technically it's actually not meditation if I put my focus on that sensory. So we were discussing to say, should I actually focus on the counting which is more mental, right? Or should I focus on that sensory,

Lama Sarahni: Right? Yeah.

Lian Sang: What is this?

Lama Sarahni: For the focus on the sensory, the idea is to focus on that sensory to the exclusion of all the others, right? So now we're just one sensory away from dropping in beyond all sensories. So there would be that advantage to focusing on the sensory to withdraw from the other ones. But you're right, the focusing on the counting would do the same thing. Would it or wouldn't it?

Can you mentally count and still hear the traffic noise?

Can you mentally count and still be aware of saliva in your mouth?

It will work the same way to just count, to count down.

So I would suggest that yes, it would work the same way.

Scripture says, use your breath and count, which seems like two different things to me.

Lian Sang: And second, the other question I had was that we were practicing having the tongue touching the tip of the roof of the mouth. I felt that if I touch it, I actually tend to have more saliva.

Lama Sarahni: Oh no, really?

Lian Sang: I don't know whether I'm doing it correctly. So it is like you keep having to swallow.

Lama Sarahni: I don't know. Maybe you're touching it too hard. It shouldn't be touching. It should just be resting, I think.

Lian Sang: Okay, thank you.

Lama Sarahni: That has something to do with the subtle body connection. That's why they stand, and they want something at that spot that has to do with the governing vessel and conception vessel, and where they meet. Why put the tongue there? I don't know, but something about that.

Lian Sang: Yeah, and surprisingly the, sorry, I'm diverting, you know the Chinese has the Tao, right? The Tao practice, they actually explain that by touching the tip up there. You moist your mouth so that your mouth is not dry. So it's like the opposite of what we are talking about.

Lama Sarahni: The opposite of what I said.

Lian Sang: Opposite of what we say. Yeah. Okay.

Lama Sarahni: So let's interpret that as saying when you put your tongue there, it balances your mouth. How's that?

Lian Sang: Okay, thank you.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, that's a good compromise. That's really interesting.

Luisa: I ask the last question, because they're asking about the posture. I sent you an email, but maybe it is easier now. I am trying to try the meditation with the eyes a bit open. I didn't do that before. And then what happens to me, even when I am not focusing on the tip of my nose, and I'm trying to focus on a plane a bit far, I start to see double. And then I also start to kind of blink faster if I am in a trance, I don‘t know how to explain. So I start to feel this kind of tik, tik, tik, tik, and then it distracts me a lot. So I don't know, shall I kind of continue or is there any trick or something? Does it happen to someone else?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. I don't know. I don't keep my eyes open because they do dry out. But when you are starting to see double, it's that you're starting to see out of both eyes at the same time, which we ordinarily have a dominant eye. The other one’s seeing too, but when you are seeing equally out of both eyes, you'll see things not completely double, but two of them there. So that's not a bad thing. The bad thing is that you're noticing it, because you're not supposed to be seeing what's coming in through the eyes. We're supposed to be focusing. I'd say keep trying and if a week or 10 days from now it's still these weird things happening and it's distracting, just let them close.

Luisa: Okay. Thank you.

Lama Sarahni: Okay. Monica asked after homeworks, there is a separate homework for the rest of the problems and antidotes, so no problem there.

[Usual closing]

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for doing your homeworks, everybody.

Class 6: The Five Problems of Meditation, and the Eight Corrections (part 2)

21 January 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Class 6

Welcome back. It's lovely to see everyone. This is ACI course 3, class 6, January 21st, 2024. Let's gather our minds here, please.

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Usual opening]

Review class 5

Okay, last class we learned about the first three problems that anyone embarking on their meditation career is going to encounter sooner or later. And the first of those problems is just not knowing what to meditate on. Right?

Joana says wrong. So the first of the problems is something else than that. Yes, says

Joana, you can tell us what that is.

Joana: It's just not feeling like doing it, just being lazy.

Lama Sarahni: Just being lazy, not interested. And so all you have to do is make one adjustment and that fixes your lelo, right?

No, it takes more than one. It takes all eight meditation corrections just to overcome lelo, right? No, Siau-Cheng says no. So which ones does it take to overcome lelo? Siau-Cheng: You need four corrections. The first one is, feel attracted towards the meditation, thinking how good it is to meditate. And the second one, to decide that we want to be a good meditator. And the third one is really to put in the effort to get to become a good meditator. And last one is to experience the ease and the pressure physically and mentally coming up from meditating regularly.

Lama Sarahni: When meditating is easy and pleasurable, we want to do it just like anything else that we want to do. Good.

So then our second problem that we will then encounter is that we're sitting there and all of a sudden we forget what we're doing, right? No, not exactly. Even our, not even, but our translator knows the answer to that one. The word is forgetting the instruction, but it means losing the object, just off the object completely. And there's something we need to cultivate that serves as the antidote for forgetting the object completely. And that was that quality of attention called recollection, drenpa—the ability to hold our attention on the object of our choice because we say so. It's on and off, on and off, on and off for a long time. And finally, that drenpa state of mind, we can turn it on, and it will hold our mind on the object.

Then we are at risk for the third of the five problems, which I'm forgetting the name of, somebody help me. What's the third of the five problems?

Siau-Cheng: Jiingwa gupa.

Lama Sarahni: Jiingwa gupa, getting dullness, and getting agitated. Our mind is fixed on the object now, which means it can get bored and uninterested on the object. Or it can get too tight, too grasping to it, and the quality of the mind gets this agitation, which is kind of hard to describe until we've experienced it. We've all experienced it, we just don't know that's what it is.

So, once we're on the object without needing to struggle to stay on it, we have these swings of dullness and agitation. The antidote to dullness and agitation is an antidote that doesn't do anything. It's that habit called sheshin, which means this habit of checking from time to time to see what's the quality of my mind on my object. Sheshin just alerts us, and then we the meditator needs to go, Oh, dullness there. Oh, agitation there. But the sheshin isn’t the fixer of it. It's just the alert that reminds us to check. Then we have to decide what we're going to do about it, if we're going to do anything about it.

So when we're checking, we're checking for dullness and we're checking for agitation.

There's gross forms of dullness and there's gross forms of agitation, and there's subtle dullness and there is subtle agitation. Through the course of our career, we will be able to distinguish between those different levels of dullness and agitation, and we'll be the ones to decide what quality of mind is the one that I am trying to hold.

What's the quality of mind that will be the one through which my meditation can take me to the level where I can sustain my object of intention deeply enough to then turn my attention to the true nature of that object, which is coming later, way later.

We need to be able to recognize dullness and agitation, gross and subtle.

We learned that that classical explanation for dullness is the difference between having fixation alone, fixation with clarity, and fixation with clarity and intensity. And that gross dullness is when we're fixed on the object, but we have neither clarity nor intensity. Without clarity we can't have intensity. If we're missing this bright, clear state of mind, but we're on the object, we're in gross dullness. It might be an accomplishment to get on our object with gross dullness, but then we want to tune it further.

Subtle dullness is when we're on the object, our mind is bright and clear, but we're lacking that intensity of focus. Without that intensity, we can't sustain the level of concentration necessary to move through these different stages to reach the platform from which we can investigate the objects‘ true nature.

But the thing is, a mind that is fixated and clear, feels really good. So it's hard to really want to put in the effort to get that gnar. Then, when we even do, that intensity that we're putting effort into holding, will tighten our mind up and it'll push us into agitation. Then we need to bring that back down. So, the fourth problem is looking for dullness and agitation. No wait, that's the third. The third is just looking for dullness and agitation.

Problem 4: Not taking action

The fourth problem is called du mijepa. Du mijepa means not taking action. Vocabulary

Du mijepa is the fourth problem. Du mijepa means not taking action. What this means is that when we're on our object and our sheshin has checked in, and we know the quality of our mind. Then a little while later, sheshin checks in again, and son of a gun, the quality of our mind is the same. We didn't fix it. We didn't fix what we noticed from problem three, whether it was dullness or agitation.

It seems silly, right? Why in the world would you check, see that it's there, and then check again and find that it's still there. But it happens. It happens to all meditators.

Why it happens, you're going to get to explore for yourself. But it has something to do with comfort and wanting, and not feeling like making the effort, or deciding it's okay where it is. It's kind of like a complacency.

Sheshin goes, Oh yeah, it's dull. I'll adjust it. But you don't really. But you think you have, and you don't find out until sheshin kicks in again and goes, Oh, I have the problem now of not taking action when I should be.

The homework says something like, how do you know you have the fourth problem? And it's when we check in, we check again, and the problem is still there. It means we have the problem of not fixing the problem. Get it?

What problem are we not fixing? We're not fixing the jingwa or the gupa. The antidote to not fixing is to apply an antidote. But now, would the antidote that we apply be the same if we find that our mind is dull, or if we find our mind is too agitated?

Do you think it would take the same kind of correction to fix either one?

No. It's going to take a certain kind of fix for dullness, and a different kind of fix for agitation. That's what these two—drimpa and hlupa—are referring to.

The antidote to not taking action is what you do to take action against dullness, and what you do to take action against agitation. At the stage that we're still working with our problem number three, the swing between dullness and agitation, we're learning to recognize those qualities of mind—gross agitation, subtle agitation versus completely distracted, which means we're off the object and don't have fixation. Or gross dullness, subtle dullness where we've got the clarity or not, the intensity or not. We're learning to recognize those.

Then learning what to do about them is what helps us overcome the problem of not taking action. If we don't know what to do, we're not going to take action or we're going to try things that don't work or we're going to waste our time, et cetera.

7. Antidote: Take action

Antidotes for dullness

The antidote for do mijepa—not taking action—technically is du jepa—take action. Don't look at this du jepa yet, because that's the fifth problem. So du jepa means sheshin has alerted us, Ah, my dullness is still there. Oops. Okay, I'm going to fix it this time. What I do is cultivate this ability to drimpa, my quality of mind. Drimpa means to tighten it up.

Suppose you have a clothesline, one of those retractable ones, and you pull it out and you hook it on the shade lounge and then it looks tight, but then you go back an hour later and the tension has moved the shade lounge, and so now the clothesline is droopy.

What do you have to do? Push the shade lounge or hook it to something else so that it comes up taught again. So when we find our mind has become this droopy clothes line, drimpa means to tighten it up. The implication is that all we have to do is think ‚tighten up‘ and it will tighten up. Sometimes that works, most of the time it doesn't. But it's the first effort, is to not lose our object, but just notice, oh, I'm a sloppy clothesline right now. I have my object in front of me. I'm just going to make myself brighten up.

Another analogy is the (restat? 27:20) on the overhead light. It's somehow turning itself down and you just turn the restat up on your quality of attention and interest on your object. It actually can be that easy, that simple when we learn how to do it.

Our human habit is that it's the quality of the object, or what the object's doing, that determines how interested we are and whether we get more interested or less interested. If we rely on that habit as we've got this one object in front of us and we're expecting the object to do something to brighten us up, that's partly why we would fail to take action. Because we would be waiting for the object to get more interesting, and it's not going to do it, because we're making the object. We need to make our mind more bright on the object that we've brought to mind mentally.

Drimpa is this art to first of all to recognize times in life where you actually can feel that difference from ehhh, to, Oh! When we can feel that change happen, we can start to induce that change. Just by willpower, you could say.

Depending on our circumstances, our effort to brighten up may or may not work, or it may not last. You brighten up for a little bit and then it sinks back down and you do it again and it sinks back down. At some point, it's like we get the negative feedback loop and we quit trying or we decide, well, I just can't do it. That would drop us back into the not taking or the „not fixing it“ problem.

Drimpa is to brighten up.

If the dullness is too strong and just intentionally brightening up, doesn't work, they say the next step is to imagine there's a bright light shining on your object so that the word is „think bright“. Just for the image in front of your mind to be brighter, your mind will become brighter. You still haven't lost the object. You're just adjusting it a little bit to try to get that mind to wake up a little more.

If that still doesn't work, then at some point we're supposed to say, This unfixable dullness is unacceptable. I need to drop my object for a short while. Wow, I make the adjustment to my dull mind, and then I will take that bright mind and turn it back onto my meditation object.

So we're allowed to drop the object and shift to something that will uplift our mind. For this to work, we need some prearranged thing that we can rely upon to actually uplift our mind. If we just decide, I'm going to try something else, that something else isn't necessarily going to brighten us up.

They have classical instructions on what things to use, and maybe one of them will turn out to be what works for you.

If you find that you don't relate to any of those in that way, for them to automatically just go whoop, then find something in your personal life that anytime you think of it, your mind goes, Whoa. It just comes alive by way of thinking of that object. But then the tendency will be, I want to stay thinking about that object because I like it so much. We'll still be in the problem of not taking action. We took action but we stayed off the object.

Once we've got that mind bright and clear, we put the bright, clear mind back on the meditation object and make the effort to stay bright on the object. We're using the other object to bring back the brightness, taking the brightness, focusing on the object that unfortunately we think was causing dullness. But it wasn't the object. In either case, it wasn't the object. But we're using one to help the other.

The classical examples for the object to turn our mind to in order to overcome dullness is to, sorry, I got to find it here.

The first one thatPabogka Rinpoche suggests is to turn your mind to how fortunate you are to be alive, as healthy as you are, whatever level that is that, allows you to be studying the dharma, taking teachings, trying to meditate. Having a human life is strange, rare and peculiar compared to all other forms of life, and it's the perfect kind of life that we can use in order to go on, to stop our and others suffering.

To be a human is extraordinary, and to be a human who's met the Dharma is much more extraordinary. To be a human who's met the Dharma that's taught in this progressive way that keeps your interest enough to be studying, it means you're beyond extraordinary. To just turn our minds to that is supposed to have this ability for us to go, Wow, and get us all bright and alert.

It may take multiple efforts. It may even take using that sequence of thinking about how extraordinary these circumstances are to gain that as a deep realization before it will be the subject that will bring our minds to bright alertness again.

If we try that one and we just don't relate, another mind pepper upper they say, is to think of the benefits of behaving well towards your Lama. If you have someone that you're calling Lama, our relationship with them is this portal to the changes we want to see in ourselves in our world. All we need to do, really, is to follow their instruction and please them, because of those seeds that plants in our own minds. So maybe we're someone who has that deep heartfelt sense of devotion to one spiritual teacher. Then all you have to do when you're either down or agitated is turn your mind to the spiritual teacher and think of their love for you. All of a sudden you just go, Oh, I can meditate again, just because of their relationship with them. So maybe it's our love for our teacher that brightens us up.

Another he says is maybe it's thinking of the good qualities of a Buddha and feeling our aspiration to become like that. That maybe is the thing that for you inspires your mind to get brighter again.

We need to find our own.

I have a friend who's studying the Dharma and four or five years ago, her daughter had a baby. It's her first grand baby, and every time my friend—she always has a smile on her face—but when she started talking about her grand baby, she just lit up. Oh, I love that baby so much. She's so amazing. Her mind would go from whatever level it was into 10 times as bright just by thinking of that baby.

All of us have something that we can turn to when our mind is down that will bring this uplifting thought. But then we want to keep thinking about the baby. The du mjjepa applying the antidote du jepa is to get that bright alert grandbaby state of mind and turn it back onto your meditation object that you left to go get more bright.

Now, last ditch effort: If even grandbaby doesn't do it, then you break off your session, you splash water in your face, you do some exercise or you go outside and look at the sky. Anything that'll wake you back up.

But if you do that as your antidote for your dullness, get back on the cushion. Once your mind is bright, get back on the cushion, back on the meditation object, even if it's just for a few minutes more. You don't want to break off your meditation session on the point of „I didn't even complete my session because I got so dull, or so agitated“. We'll get there.

If we've got this timer going, because we've got 32 minutes to meditate, and it took us 30 minutes to actually get all our adjustments made, and I'm finally going good on the object and my timer goes off at 32 minutes.

Geshela says, stop. You want to do more, but stop at the timer and it will leave you eager to get back on that cushion tomorrow. I finally got there and it was feeling so good and I want to do more. Whereas if we say at 32 minutes, Oh, I'm going to stay longer. We stay until it's not going so well, and then we stop. You see the seeds that we're planting?

We actually want to finish almost in the feeling like, I'm not done yet. Great.

Over time meditators will say, My meditation life is more real and more pleasurable than my non-meditating life. I know that what I do in non-meditating life affects my meditating life. But really, it's my outer life is the interim, and my meditation life feels more real. Like it switches.

Until then, we're thinking, Oh, meditation time is an interim from real life, and it'll start to make this shift. It really does. Especially with lots of retreat. Then without regular retreat, you kind of lose it. That's my experience.

Okay, so fixing dullness, you go through this sequence: first, try to do it without going off the object. If that doesn't work, try the other object.

Try different other objects through the course of your career until you find the one that works.

Then use that one every single time until it doesn't work anymore. Then you have to find a new one. But mostly it'll work all the time. Then make sure that when your mind's bright, you go back to your meditation object.

Only as a last ditch effort, you get off your cushion and wake yourself up.

That's for dullness. Noticing I haven't corrected, so I'm going to correct. That's applying the antidote. Then this is what you do.

(43:16)

Antidotes for agitation

Then for agitation, you don't want to tighten up with agitation. What we apply as our correction for not correcting needs to be different. Agitation, it's a bit confusing in the reading and in my notes from Geshe Michael's class, because it keeps saying with agitation, you start thinking about lunch. But that's not agitation, that's fullon distraction.

If your object is the image of the Buddha, and you're thinking about the luncheon you need to go to and who's going to be there, even if Buddha image is still vaguely in your movie screen, your attention is to lunch. It's hard to really distinguish when is that agitation and when does it become distraction.

Agitation is when our focus of attention is still on our meditation object. We're bright, we have this intensity. The intensity gets tighter and tighter. When the intensity gets tighter and tighter, it might be like, here's our Buddha image, and we're feeling like it's almost coming alive. We focus in harder and harder to make it more and more real. That effort of tightness is agitating to our powers of concentration. It's like you're putting too much pressure on the pressure valve, and the valve's going to pop. When that valve pops, our mind goes flying off the object.

We would tend to think, if you've got this project you're working on and it's all these different details that you need to be following with this project. You're beginning to think, man, I've got a zero in on one part of this project. So we get tighter on the project to overcome all these little distractions. If we do that in meditation, that getting tighter, like putting more effort into holding the object when our mind is agitated, will actually, our mind will jump off the object entirely.

The correction for this mind doing this around the object, isn't to force it to stay put. It‘s to let loose. It‘s a kind of a non-human reaction to when we need to focus really hard, to calm down. Let the mind calm down to increase its focus of attention. That's called hlupa, loosen up.

The classical example it was the loose strings. Do you remember the story?

The way I heard it was, Lord Buddha has just been revived by the maiden with the bowl of yogurt and he's coming to. As he's coming to, there's this boat going down the river. A music student is getting taught by the music teacher. The music teacher is saying,

You've got to tune your strings just right.

Too loose and they're too sloppy to make music.

Too tight and the strings will break.

You need your strings adjusted just right to make the music.

That becomes this meditation instruction. We need our mind tuned just right between dullness and agitation. When we have that just right ability to hold easily, we can reach that platform where we can take that finely tuned state of mind, and turn it to the absence of something that we thought was there but was never there.

Our finely two mind can go, Duh, and penetrate right into that and hold it—either intellectually, conceptually, subtly conceptually, all the way to directly, meaning non conceptually someday.

Get that mind tuned just right.

This feeling of loosening up when we're agitated and tightening up when we're dull, for many times hearing these teachings, I heard the words. Yeah, yeah, I understand the words. I got my homeworks and quizzes. But I didn't understand it until I had spent enough time on my cushion working with that.

And actually, intentionally pushing my mind into agitation to see if I could recognize it. How much agitation does it have to have before I register agitation?

Then, what does it feel like to try to tighten up that agitation to fix it versus to just loosen to fix it? It takes some exploration.

Yet our meditation career says, get yourself on the object. Stay on the object, fix it, get back, fix it, get back.

It's not saying, Let it be broken and explore what it is to have a broken meditation. Yet we really need to do that in order to progress through these problems, to be able to have the tools necessary to fix them when we notice them.

So a big part of our early career is just getting used to recognizing these states of mind, exploring how we adjust them, learning how to adjust them. That can be done on and off your cushion.

It can be done while you're watching a movie or reading a book. If we just decide that's what we're going to do as we're watching the movie.

Anything where we call upon our powers of concentration to use it to explore.

One of the things that we'll do in the extra classes in February, is we'll experiment and see if we can find some way to really feel those different changes.

As with dullness, when we recognize we have agitation, the instruction is loosen up without shifting meditation objects. Try it, check, try it, check. If it's not working, then we may need to give ourselves the instruction to shift to a different object that will bring our mind down.

Again, they have some suggestions that we can try on for size or you can come up with your own. One of those suggestions is to recall our own personal impermanence, meaning the inevitability of our death.

Maybe that one doesn't feel so immediate and so it won't work.

Another one could be, recall the three sufferings in our own lives: obvious suffering. Certainly we have it. The suffering of change, and pervasive suffering. In all its nuances, you can find the one that impacts you the most. What we're going for is that state of mind or state of heart of sobering, sobering. There's so much suffering in the world. I've got to, I want to fine tune this mind. That's supposed to be the kind of thing that would bring us down, our agitation down.

But what if our agitation is because in our everyday life there's so much suffering and there's nothing I can do, and I'm working so hard with my meditation? It's like to add to, that's just going to worsen. It is like it's going to push us into anxiety. That's not the point

Again, if those don't work, very likely there was something that happened in your life that sent you searching for answers. If you remember those circumstances or that feeling that you had, this is, I don't want this to happen to anybody ever. That's what started me on my search. Okay, I'm ready to get back on my meditation object.

Something that allows us to get back. All these analogies: Get back on the balance beam after you've fallen off. Get back on the horse, after you've been thrown. You come up with your own. But your own thought that will bring your mind from ehhhh, to ah, yes, here's why I'm here.

Then, if all of that doesn't work, you can shift to your breath. Like when we're starting our meditation, we use the breath to put us back into neutral. Because of having trained ourselves in that habitual response to focus on our breath, focusing on the breath will loosen the mind up from that agitation. But not until we've got that habitual response built.

For me personally, focusing on the breath does not work to shift my mind to neutral. I have to use something else. For most people it does, but not automatically. It takes that time and practice and training.

Then, if all of that doesn't work, we break off the meditation, do a little exercise, splash some water on your face. Those antidotes are the same for dullness as agitation. Just get somehow refreshed, calmed down, and then try again.

Don't quit on a unrepaired agitation. Get back in. Try again.

You may need to quit while you're still irritated or agitated. That's okay, but get back onto the cushion.

Let's take a break and we'll do the fifth problem and then hopefully have time to experiment a little bit.

(Break)

(59:07)

Problem 5: Taking action when it‘s not necessary

Du mijepa was not taking action.

How do you know you have problem number four?

Sheshin kicks in and you go, oh, I'm still dull. I'm still agitated.

We know we did not make the correction before, so we'll make it this time.

Problem number five is du jepa. What does du jepa mean? Take action.

Du jepa becomes a problem. Taking action becomes a problem. When we keep taking action, when we don't need to take any action anymore.

8. Antidote: Leave it alone

Look how good your Tibetan is getting. You can read the antidote and it automatically looks like English.

The antidote for du jepa is: leave it alone.

When our meditating mind is so habituated enjoyably to meditation, we will sit down to meditate and all this drenpa and sheshin correcting will be happening automatically. You don't have to keep making all those adjustments.

Leave it alone, let it go.

Maybe you're having a really great week or month of meditations, you sit down and you're in no problems. You're going.

Then life happens, and all of a sudden your meditation, you can hardly hold the object. Or you just can't clear that dullness. Don't beat yourself up. That's how this goes.

Even as an athlete, a really good athlete, they have periods when things don't go so well.

It doesn't mean you've lost the skill. It doesn't mean you made mistakes.

It just means we go back to applying what we need to make the adjustments.

Our human nature would be, oh, I'm going to give up for a while.

Our understanding nature says, No, no. I'd rather try and not do a good one than not try at all.

Although we hear from Geshe Michael, he says, Don't spend time in a sloppy meditation. The next thing out of his mouth is, But don't not spend time in meditation at all.

Well, sometimes all you've got is a lousy meditation. There are a lot of different things you can do with that one, is to think, well, I'm just sucking lousy meditation out of this world. May everybody in the world have great meditations because mine was so lousy today.

It was an experience. You burned it off.

Don't let you think to yourself, I am never going to meditate well again. Or maybe I'm never going to meditate well at all.

We're planting seeds. We're ripening seeds.

It's a powerful kindness to everybody in your world to try to get your mind to concentrate, adjusting for dullness, adjusting for agitation, with this motivation of becoming one who can help everybody stop their suffering.

That's the power of the practices that we learn, is the motivation that we have that puts us on the cushion to begin with. Is that we're doing this because of love, because we understand that suffering is a big mistake. And this is part of what I can do to help stop that belief in everybody.

When we have that in the back of our hearts for our meditation, any effort is better than no effort at all, understanding that it's in a deep meditative state that we will experience directly what it takes to stop making that mistake.

There's no other way to get there. We can get it intellectually. But to get it deeply enough to change our world, we need to be meditators to do that.

Experiment

(65:32)

Let's do an experiment.

Let me describe an analogy that you can follow along thinking of your own personal experience. It'll be the analogy of watching a movie, in order to try to get a more clear picture of what we mean by on-off the object, agitation, dullness.

Then I had for us to just sit, using our breath as the focus of our meditation—even though we don't use that as our object—in order to explore being aware of on-off, aware of on with dullness, on with agitation, and see if we can get a sense of the feel of those, and what it feels like to loosen up and tighten up.

We're just exploring. I can't know what you're experiencing. I can just make suggestions.

Think first, not meditating, but just in your experience that there's a particular movie. There's this movie and you decide you're going to watch it.

Turning the movie on is just bringing your meditation object to mind.

Maybe you've got your cell phone, and you have emails to check.

So, the movie is running and you're checking your emails, looking at the movie, checking your emails, looking at the movie.

We don't have fixation yet.

Finally, we put the phone down and park our minds on the movie.

We hear the outer traffic. We hear stuff, but it doesn't pull us off.

We've got fixation.

If this movie is something that we're actually interested in, then our fixation maybe is clear, and maybe it's really interesting. So our fixation is clear and fascinated.

As the movie goes on, maybe it gets to some parts that are not so interesting.

Our fascination droops. Maybe even the clarity droops.

But we're still interested enough in the movie that we're not losing it.

The movie goes on and then more happens, and it's like we get more interested.

Maybe it's starting to get a little scary. In which case we start having some emotion. Like if you don't like scary movies, then we're starting to get agitated: I'm not sure I want to continue watching, right?

It's like our mind even maybe wants to jump off.

The bad stuff comes, and I go like that (holding her hands in front of her face) —off the object, because the agitation pushed me off. I made the choice, of course, but we're just trying to get this quality of mind that is reacting to the movie.

So my analogy fails. But we've experienced these states of mind before: gross dullness, subtle dullness, subtle agitation, just gross agitation, until it pops us out completely.

If we can be aware of those shifts in states of mind as we're watching the movie, and we had enough motivation, we could prevent the disinterest from coming on.

The way we might do that would be we'd start looking at the background or what the character was wearing. We'd be looking at increased details of what's happening in the movie in order to keep our minds from getting dull on the boring parts.

But then that's agitating. We're not really following the movie along so much, because we've got this part of our mind that's agitating to keep us from being dull.

Then we recognize, Oh, I'm really missing the sequence, because I'm enjoying the background so much. We loosen up and can become more aware of the storyline.

Then again, maybe the storyline gets agitating and we need to intentionally loosen up. Or maybe it's getting boring again.

That's happening throughout the whole movie, and we're making these adjustments without having to say in words, Dullness, fix it. As Tom was pointing out, it's a distraction to do that. But in order to learn to do that, we need to recognize them and make the fix.

Then soon it happens without losing the focus of attention on the object.

With that idea of what we're looking for, I would like to just play a little bit and say, let's park our minds on the sensation of the breath, and we'll go like three minutes. Your task is to watch the breath. Don't even be counting. Just watch the breath with a sense of awareness of on or off it, and see what happens in three minutes.

We're just noticing to see how our noticing goes.

Then we'll shift from that, I'll give you another instruction about what to do.

We'll try a couple of different things.

So the first three minutes, let's just focus on the breath and notice being off it.

If you go off it in three minutes, okay, ready? Go. I'm going to be the timer.

(3:00)

Okay, now, let go of the object of your breath, but don't open your eyes.

Think about that experience in the last few minutes.

Did you lose the object?

Was it sudden or gradual, the losing the object?

Did it seem to take a long time before you recognized you left the object?

Were you able to just correct, and get right back on the object without convincing yourself to do so?

Just note that experience.

Okay, let's do it again.

This time we'll go five minutes to give us a little bit more time.

This time I'd like you to try to catch the moment that you recognize you're off the object, and then say, think to yourself, „Great“.

Reward yourself by going back to the object.

It's just an attitude instead of, Oh, man, I was off the object. —Aha, I caught it. Let's go back.

You can do it in mantle words or just do it in feeling.

The alertness of the awareness, catching myself off the object is what we're trying to find.

We will go five minutes, just the breath.

Notice if you're on or off your breath right this minute.

You get back on if you were off it.

Then let it go and listen to me.

Think back on that few minutes of experience.

Could you experience the moment of recognizing you are off the object?

Then put yourself back on, experience put yourself back on.

That recognizing and then putting back on the object, that's training our drenpa, our recollection, that state of mind ‚back on‘.

It doesn't take mental words, just a recognition and then a shift.

Now, let's go back on the object, the breath.

You focus while I talk. Sorry about that.

What we want to do is just note the quality of your attention on the breath.

Then intentionally turn up that attention to a keen fascination of those sensations.

Find a sensation of the breath.

Focus your mind on it with such curiosity and fascination.

Now drop that curiosity and fascination, and just focus on the sensation.

Now focus in. Add the curiosity. Add the fascination.

Same object, different quality of your mind.

Can you feel it?

Now, if we tighten it up further, trying to penetrate that tiny little spot.

Can you feel the intensity go into agitation?

Too tight.

Let it loose.

Fascination without drilling on it.

Now, loosen all the way back to what it feels like when we just started.

Put your attention on your breath.

Ordinary focus of attention.

Now, in order to feel what it feels like, make that intention disinterested, sloppy and dull. Still on the breath, but who cares?

Brighten it up. Just back to the ordinary state of mind when we first start.

Put your attention on your breath.

Pretend it goes dull again, so that you can recognize it when it does.

Now, recognize the dullness, and brighten the mind.

Brighten the mind to the keenness, the intensity, fascination.

Check to see if the fascination has faded

If so, tighten up.

If it's too tight, loosen up.

There's a sweet spot somewhere.

Okay, nice.

So let your breath go.

Bring yourself back to your room to this class.

So these are just ways to explore.

It's not meditating, but it's ways to explore the sensations, the qualities of mind that we'll be learning to get used to and to adjust from. As we learn the seven or the nine stages of meditation, these are the qualities of mind on whatever a meditation object will be that we'll be working with to move ourselves through those nine stages.

Again, we don't have to be in meditation to explore agitation and dullness, and what it feels like to correct them.

The more familiar we can get, the easier it becomes to translate that into the meditating mind and make the corrections.

Again, I'm hoping that our extra credit sessions in February. We'll explore these a little bit more, see if we can get familiar with them.

[Usual closing]

Class 7: The Nine Stages of Meditation

25 January 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Class 7

Welcome back. We are ACI course 3 class 7 already. It's January 25th, 2004.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please.

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Usual opening]

(7:18)

Last class, we learned about that 4th problem of meditation, which is the problem of not correcting what we found when we checked, when we were working at the 3rd problem. Meaning we failed to correct dullness or agitation.

Then how do we know that we still have the 4th problem? Because our sheshin kicked in, and it's like, Oh, still dull or still agitated.

Then how do we fix it? We do the corrections, which is tighten up if we've got dullness, and loosen up if we've got agitation.

Then we still will come across a 5th problem. That 5th problem is taking action when none is necessary. Meaning we've gotten so good at correcting for dullness and agitation that we keep correcting. It sounds sort of silly, but we'll see in tonight's class how this happens. That we get to the point where it's time to just flow, and we keep this agitation about checking going on when it's time to just let things slide.

Introduction to the 9 Stages of Meditation

Now that we understand the problems we're going to encounter along our path, and suppose we've already been applying ourselves to the first 4 corrections to those 5 problems. It means we've gotten to the point where we're interested enough in gaining the benefits of a meditation career that we're willing to make the effort, and we're actually starting to meditate regularly.

Then what is helpful to know is what it will feel like, what our mind, our concentration will feel like as we progress in this career of being a meditator.

There are different levels of concentration that we will reach, that being able to recognize that we're at that level just gives us a better sense that we're making progress.

When we see this map of the progress that we want to make, we will then we have this motivation to keep up, the effort to improve. Without knowing that there are these different levels of meditative concentration, we might get to the first one and think, Done. I'm a great meditator. When there's eight more levels of depth that we can reach through which we are fine tuning our powers of concentration on demand like into a really fine microscope.

A microscope with 9, actually 10 lenses, you know what I mean?

The microscope in the science lab, the ones in high school had one lens.

Then you go to college and you've got 3 lenses, a 10x, a 100x, a 1000x. Then you're in the research department and maybe you've got 5 lenses that just get deeper and deeper. Let's pretend we can have microscope with 10 lenses. Going through the progress of these 9 levels that we're going to talk about tonight, it's like shifting from one lens to the next. It's not like we can sit down on the first day and look in the microscope and just go, I'm going to go to level 9.

Theoretically we could do that. Most of us, we barely even peer into lens number 1. L

Learning what those different lenses feel like and what effort is going on to reach and stay in them, helps us be our own judge of how our progress is going.

Nobody else can judge your progress. I suppose an omniscient being can. So if you have an omniscient being that you can meditate with for crying out loud, grab them and use them, because they can know your mind while you're doing it. I don't have one in my life that I'm aware of, so nobody else can tell me, Oh yeah, yeah, your mind was at level 3 or 7. I have to know.

I remember when I was learning these stages, I heard them, the words made sense. But then when I sat down to watch my mind, it was like, I don't know what those 9 are talking about. then I was in a position to get to teach them to others and it was like, I'm telling you the words, but I really don't have them experientially yet.

Then I decided, well, I had the opportunity to do a month long retreat and I decided I would do it on these 9 stages, just to explore how does it feel like? And hopefully in a month by myself I'd be able to get through in some of them, so I'd be able to say what they were like. In the process of that, I got a better sense of analogies, different analogies, riding a bike, watching a movie, different ways in which we already turn on and off our powers of concentration to be able to try to help people get a sense of what these 9 stages are trying to describe. But to really go, Oh, that's what it is.

We got to get there. And the only way we get there is through a little bit of effort every single day, and then some extra effort when the time comes of taking some extra time and really seriously working on your meditation practice. Like over a long weekend or 10 days or 2 weeks or 6 weeks, whatever, however your life's going to go.

Tonight's class is about these 9 stages. Now I said 10 microscope lenses, because the 9th level of meditative concentration is the platform from which our meditative skills can become what's called shamatha, which isn't considered a 10th level. It's just additional stuff that happens at the 9th level that allows our meditative concentration to be so reliable, that we can then change what's underneath the microscope and not lose the concentration.

Until we reach shamatha, we keep in any given meditation session, we keep the same object underneath the microscope. When we're shamatha level meditators, we take that object and we turn our mind to the emptiness of that object, which is technically a new object.

Learning how to do that, when to do that, et cetera, is what evolves through the course of the ACI courses, and then more. It's not an additional level of meditation. It's what happens once we reach level 9. How we use a level 9 meditating mind. I'm just calling it a 10th lens because it doesn't have…nevermind.

Let's learn the nine stages

The 9 Stages of Meditation

The term is SEM NE GU

SEM = mind

NE = stay

GU = the word for 9

SEM NE GU

Classically, you would receive an object of meditation from your teacher and they would say, Meditate on this and come back when you've achieved level 1, and talk to me. We're going to learn different meditative objects next class, or maybe the next, sometime coming up soon, and in the Lam Rim, those meditation objects or topics are something we need to think about until we come to a conclusion. Then we fixate on the conclusion. In the fixation on the conclusion, that's when we want to have one of these 9 states of mind, or we're moving through these 9 states of mind.

It‘s difficult to become aware of these different qualities of concentration when we're working with something that we're having to think about, to analyze or review.

To first get familiar with these 9 stages and help ourselves move through them, it's more helpful to have as a meditation object, some static image that we're going to call to mind.

As a beginner, they'll usually say, Visualize Shakyamuni Buddha, or visualize your heart Lama if you have one. If none of the above, visualize whatever divine being that comes to you. If still nothing, is there somebody in your life who you love so much that because of them you aspire to be a kinder, better, healthier, happier person?

Maybe it's my grandmother, maybe it's my Aunt Mary, maybe it's my dog.

Ideally we want a high karmic object to spend our mind time with, but to have an image of something in mind that we're attracted to, that we love, that who inspires us, that's what's going to help us keep our minds focused such that we can start checking and moving through these levels.

You'll find. It will occur to you. Which if you don't have a teacher that says you should gaze at white Tara, and you have to choose your own object, choose carefully so that you're inspired by every moment that you're on that object.

Then the task is to call that object to mind. You look at an image or a picture, what do they really look like? Then you put that picture out of sight, necessarily, and bring it to mind. As a visualizer, you just start visualizing. There they are in front of me and maybe they're blurry or maybe they're indistinct. None of that matters so much as it is just to have them there in front.

For people who are not meditators, it's kind of a different story. But you can still call a being to mind and know whether they're there or not, whether or not you have the colors and shapes behind your forehead, or wherever your visualized object is.

For this class we are considering any given object that one has brought to mind, but let's imagine it as something static at first, so that we can kind of relate to what's going on.

Level 1: Putting the Mind on the Object

The first level of meditative concentration, the Tibetans entitles SEM JOK PA.

JOK PA = holding the object

SEM JOK PA = putting our mind on the object

The first level implies that we've already got some amount of those first four antidotes to meditating, as I said before. We're going to sit down and try. The first level we achieve is this SEM JOK PA, in which we've been given a visualization or an object to meditate on, and our ability to hold our mind on that object is minimal.

We put our mind on the object and it jumps right off. Bring it back. Jumps off. Bring it back. Jumps off. Bring it back. Jumps off.

We're at level 1. We're trying, but we're off the object way more than we're on the object. In our meditating obstacles‘ corrections, at this stage, we are just learning what it is to have drenpa, to grow our drenpa, our recollection.

Our recollection is so puny at this stage that our minds off in left field by the time we go, oh, I'm off my object, and we pull it back, park on the object again. Then the puppy dog just goes right off again, and the puppy dog's gone to three trees and two fire hydrants before drenpa goes, Oops, I'm off my object. And back we go. Gone again.

This is level one.

When we first start to meditate and we experience the puppy dog mind like that, we think, Oh my gosh, I'm so awful. I'm worse than I ever thought I was, because at least at work, I can concentrate when I need to. But you give me an object instead of me choosing my object, or feeling obligated for work for the object, and now you want me to stay on that object? The puppy dog's going to say, no way, no way, no way. And it looks like we're worse than before.

The task at this level is learning, it's actually growing the strength of our recollection, our drenpa. To get from level 1 to level 2, we're growing the ability to catch ourselves off the object. We tend not to do that. We tend to try to focus on the object, and then we realize we're not on it and we just try to focus again. But to train our recollection, we recognize, Oh, puppy dog's way over there.

We need to go and recognize that I'm on this object instead, and then say, No, my job is this object. Let's come back.

It's helpful to, when we recognize, Oh, wrong object, no problem, now I know and now I can go back. You reward in a sense instead of berate and return to your object.

Level 2: Putting the Mind on an Object in a Stream

As our ability to go, oh, I'm off my object growths, we move from SEM JOK PA to GYUN-DU JOK PA, the second level.

GYUN-DU = in a stream

Holding the mind or putting the mind in a stream, meaning on the object in a stream. So, second level means we have our object, we're focusing on our object, and the puppy dog actually pays a little attention before it runs off. Then we catch, Oh, off. Come back, okay, park, and then it runs off.

We're on the object a little longer.

They say we're at level 2 when we find ourselves actually on the object about as long as it would take to do one mala of Mani mantras, the Om Mani Pedme Hum, one round of malas takes about a minute.

When you can by way of your own decision, stay on your meditation object for a minute without recognizing that you've jumped off, you're at level 2.

But then the mind jumps off and it's a while before you catch it to bring it back. So even at level 2, you are in fact off your object more than you're on your object.

Level 1: You're off your object a lot more than on the object.

Level 2: You're off your object, not so much more, but still more than on your object. You're on your object in a stream, like a little bit of a stream.

Level 3: Patch-like Fixation or Putting the Mind on the Object

As we get more familiar with catching our mind off the object, and saying, Come back! We can move from mind on the object in a stream to LEN-TE JOK PA, which is mind on the object like patches, putting on patches.

This one means that your ability to catch yourself off the object has actually gotten strong enough that you're catching yourself go off. The object happens just as you lose the object, and then you patch it. You patch the gap.

So finally in level 1, 2, 3, we are in fact on the object longer than we're off the object, because very swiftly off the object we get right back on. They say it's like patching the hole in your blue jeans before it rips the whole knee out. You fix it before the damage is so bad.

I'm going to draw you a picture.

If my black line on the board means the length being on our meditation object, and the no black line means we're off the meditation object, the first level of meditation, would look like this. Can you see? They're just dots.

Second level of meditation might look like this,

We're on for a little bit longer, but we're still off a whole lot longer than we're on.

Third level of meditation would look like this,

Not necessarily that they're all equal, but it's getting patched, so that we're on the object a whole lot longer than off the object. But we're still getting completely distracted from the object at level three.

We just catch it really fast. Whereas in the previous two levels, our ability to catch ourselves off the object is very slow, but getting faster.

Level 1, level 2, level 3–we are in all of these training ourselves to recognize we're off the object, and then to make that correction to pull it back.

So in these stages we are training that quality of mind called drenpa, recollection. It kicks in, and we pull it back. It kicks in, and we pull it back. It kicks in, and we pull it back. It's getting stronger and stronger through 1, 2, and 3.

Level 4: The Mind is Placed Closely to the Object

NYEWAR JEK-PA, we've shifted from JOK-PA to JEK-PA.

I don't exactly know the words, but the JEK-PA means that the mind is now on the object. The JOK-PA meant the same thing, but it was a different quality of mind.

A mind that can be on the object and lose it is JOK-PA.

A mind that's on the object and can no longer lose it is JEK-PA.

NYEWAR JEK-PA means the mind closely, closely on the object.

NYEWAR means closely on the object.

To reach this level, this is number 4, our drenpa state of mind, our recollecting state of mind, has become complete, or full, to reach level 4.

A recollecting state of mind needs to be such that it's on all the time.

We are not needing to catch ourselves off the object anymore, because that ability to hold the object has gotten so strong that the mind can't get off the object at all.

Drenpa starts out being, now and then. But we're training it to be full-on on demand. Then it's not a different state of mind anymore. Our attention on the object is held, thereby drenpa without having to intentionally apply it anymore. It's there, and it will hold us on the object until our time is up.

Our drenpa has, as we train it, it has this ability, we have this ability, for our drenpa to shut off just as the timer's going to go off. Eventually you don't need a timer. You just say, I'm on 57 minutes today, and your drenpa will keep you on until 57 minutes, and then you'll pop right out. But that takes training and development.

NYEWAR JEK-PA is, we've finally reached the ability to stay on the object. So we've finally reached fixation. Fixation means we can park our mind on the object without fear of losing it.

But now what's going to happen is that we will, our task then is to sort out whether the quality of my mind on the object is clear, the clarity, and intensity.

Does my fixated mind have clarity and intensity?

Now we're starting to train and rely upon that state of mind called shehhin, that we learned about before. The mind that's going to check to remind us to fix what's wrong. Sheshin is just a checker. It doesn't do the fixer.

At first we have to make a conscious effort to check. It feels distracting, but it's not a distraction off the object. We are on the object and we do have to intentionally remember, Oh, clarity? Intensity? Meaning, do I have dullness? Do I have agitation?

Early on in level 4, we're training this ability to become aware of the quality of our concentration as we're concentrating.

That too comes on and off at first, until as we make progress, our sheshin ability will also become full-on like the drenpa, and we'll be on the object and watching for a shift in the quality of clarity and intensity without having to intentionally remind ourselves to do that.

That takes time and training, and effort to grow both drenpa and sheshin to their full capacity, so that neither one now interferes with our meditative concentration on the object.

At first, we have to apply it. At level 4 we have to apply it. What we're looking for is agitation or dullness. Most commonly, when we are first reaching level 4, our concentration has a tendency to wander around on the object a lot. That's called the agitation.

It's taking this effort to keep the quality and that effort is like you're twisting something more than it needs. You know how if you take a yarn and you twist and twist and twist and then you keep twisting, and then the yarn twists up all over itself. Instead of just getting to the point where it's twisted. That's what a working hard to get from level 4 to level 5 does. We keep twisting. We're not off the object, but when our sheshin checks, it goes, Whoa, you are all nodded up. And we go, Ah, and relax back, loosen up.

At level 4, we're fixated. But now we either have this too tight to stay there or we get overconfident, Ah, I'm finally have my fixation, my drenpa is a hundred percent, and we stop really pushing. That lapses our mind into dullness. So at level 4, we're learning to recognize, Oh, that's what she meant by agitation. Oh, that's what she meant by dullness. Obvious dullness is pretty obvious. Subtle dullness isn't so obvious.

Level 5: Bringing the Mind under Control

Then, as we make the correction, we loosen up and then we loosen too far, and we go into dullness. Then we recognize dullness and we tighten it up, and we tighten too far. We go into agitation. Back and forth, back and forth.

The process of learning how to be aware of the correction and overcorrection and then correct that, and then correct that, swinging back and forth takes us through these levels of 4, 5, 6, and sort of 7.

They try to help us and say, Well, mainly at level 4 you're taming agitation, and then at level 5 you're working with subtle dullness. Then at level 6 we're working with subtle agitation until we finally get to level 7.

In my experience, this distinction between 5 and 6 doesn't seem like you go from one to the next. In level 4, we are swinging pretty big times between agitation and dullness. And as that's getting more and more subtle between the two, you're able to pick it up, be aware of it, and fix it with less effort, less conscious effort.

It's happening more automatically at level 5 and even more automatically at level 6. But still this sense of a swing between agitation, dullness, agitation, dullness in any given session until we reach level 7.

Luisa: I just was thinking when I can associate or relate to agitation and tightening up, or try to concentrate harder. But to loosen up, I don't know. In reality, what does it mean to loosen up? For me, loosen up is kind of, okay, think about something else, but I don't think this is the point. Can you maybe give some hints? What is it to loosen up the object?

Lama Sarahni: Right. So when we're, say we have the Shakyamuni Buddha image, and because we caught ourselves being kind of sleepy on it, we said, I'm going to tighten up, and I'm going to focus really clearly on what his hands look like. I'm trying to get those copy colored shiny nails and see the webbing, and it's like resuming in so tightly that we're getting kind of stressed out about whether I've got it right. Where's that crease? How deep is that crease and far around his wrist does it go? That's getting too tight. To loosen up, you enjoy the picture of the hand that you've got before you and you don't need to go.. All these fine adjustments, to let go to loosen up is just, Ah, there it is. Without that eh eh eh about it. Then the, Ah, there it is. You know where that's going to go. Okay, sloppy, dull coming. Still got it in there, but not very interested. Ooh, tighten up.

The way I tighten up would be to, How long are those lines? What do those nails look like? I don't mean in mental words, but in focused experience. Then it gets too tight again.

The swing is happening and our sheshin ability to go check and fix, check and fix is becoming, the checker is becoming more and more subtle, but more powerful in its subtleness, so that you don't have to have the thought, I need to check. Not in mental words, but in doing. The checking will be happening constantly.

We reach level 7 when our checking is happening constantly so that we adjust constantly, and not without effort, but easily. When we reach level 7, it's called NAM-PAR SHI-WAR JE-PA.

JE-PA, we've changed words again.

Level 6: Make the Mind Peaceful

Level six is SHI-WAR JE-PA, make the mind peaceful.

Meaning we're able to correct for agitation and or dullness, and not overcorrect.

Then NAM-PAR SHI-WAR JE-PA means to make the mind totally peaceful.

We've gone from, what was number 4, the mind is placed closely on the object.

(Level 5) DUL-WAR = to tame, to discipline, make the mind disciplined.

Level 6, make the mind at peace.

Level 7, make the mind at NAM-PAR SHI-WAR totally peace.

Level 7: Make the Mind Totally at Peace

It doesn't mean we've reached Nirvana, not that kind of peace. But the ability to make the adjustments have become automatic effort, let's say that. Because we're going to reach a place where it's not even effort anymore. There's still effort at level 7.

The image I like for level 7 is that when we're first learning to ride a two wheel bicycle, when we're up at levels 1, 2, 3, we have the training wheels on the bicycle, so we can ride all over the place without fear of falling off. But because we've got the training wheels. Then dad says, Time to take the training wheels off.

Woo. In level 4, 5 and 6, we're wobbling all over the place, trying to stay upright on that bicycle.

But as we learn how to do it, we reach level 7 where we can ride that bicycle down a narrow bike path without much struggle to stay within the lines. But our hands on the handlebars are doing this (moving her hands like on bicycle handlebars) constantly to keep us there. It takes effort. We're paying attention. But we can do it, as long as we continue to pay attention and apply this automatic adjustment. That's happening at level 7.

Do you get a feel for the difference between once we're at 4, we're struggling with being new on the two wheeler. Then level 5 were a little better. Level 6, were better yet. Level 7 still needing to make all those adjustments, but we're between the lines on bicycle path.

That's a powerful level of meditation, level 7.

Some say that from level 7, given certain circumstances and events, a regular level 7 person could theoretically suddenly get pushed into the level from which they see emptiness directly.

When I heard that, it was like, Oh wow, that's cool.

It doesn't mean all I need to do is get to level 7, because the chances are slim. But it is not so hard to get to level 7 meditation.

We're shooting for level 9 so that we can use Shamatha to reach Vipashyana, intentionally under our power. But it's kind of nice to know through a different tradition—this is not in the ACI—that level 7 is a great springboard to reach.

What happens then, once we're at level 7? Level 7 is a comfortable level of meditation. We are holding ourselves on the object with clarity, with intensity.

There would be a part of us that would say, I'll just stay here, thank you very much. We don't want to make the effort to push further.

See where that 4th problem shows up? We're okay here, so we won't fix. It's like there's nothing really broken, so I'm not going to fix anything. But we're not yet at the level that we are capable of. So we want to keep some momentum going.

Level 8: Bring the Mind to One-Pointedness

Whatever we've managed to do that has trained our drenpa and trained sheshin, that's allowed us to get to level 7. We continue with that process, and we move to level 8 called TSE CHIK-TU JE-PA.

TSE CHIK, it actually means one and the same, but here it means single pointed. JE-PA means we've made it single-pointed.

We've had that term TING NGE DZIN, which means to hold single pointedly.

TSE CHIK-TU JE-PA is saying the same thing.

We've made our mind one-pointed. But we don't actually reach what's called TING NGE DZIN until we get to the 9th stage.

This ‚make the mind one-pointed‘, means that at the beginning of our session, we've done our set up, our altar, made our prostration, sat on our cushion, done our seven limbs, we take a little wiggle break, and we go into the actual meditation time at level 8. It takes us a first few minutes, maybe up to 5 or so, to get ourselves onto the object, clear out the dullness, clear out the agitation, find ourselves in that balanced bike ride. Then once we're there, we need no more effort.

That's where our obstacle number 5 comes in.

We keep applying the effort. We will keep us at level 7.

But when it's like, Okay, everything's flowing, we let go into the flow.

When we've reached level eight quality of concentration, once you release into its flow, you'll stay there until your time is up, and then you'll pop out.

So the difference between 7 and 8 is, in seven it still takes that effort through the whole time. Not conscious effort, but like a bicycle effort. At level 8, that effort is applied at the beginning and then go. But that's not level 9.

Level 9: Place the Mind on the Object Evenly or Deeply

Level 9 is reached when we finish our meditation preliminaries, we call ourselves back in, call up our meditation object, and we are at the flow of level 8 without any of that first few minutes effort to get there.

A level nine meditator has this capacity to turn on their TING NGE DZIN, their single pointed focus on their object of choice, by the decision to do so. That's all it takes.

Level 9, NAM-PAR JOK-PA, it's called. Place the mind on the object evenly or deeply.

This is where the effortless TING NGE DZIN on demand has occurred, at level 9. Ever since level 4 we have single-pointed mind. We're fixated.

But not until level 9 is our single pointed concentration full on demand.

That's what we're trying to get to.

From there, we can, staying at that level is what progresses us through Shamatha, through which we can reach Vipashyana, I'll talk about later.

Let's take a break and I'll see if I can draw a picture of 4 through 7.

It gets a little, yeah, 4 through 9, it gets a little weird, but I'll try.

But let's take a break first.

(break)

1:01:56

All of these stages were taught by Lord Buddha during his career. But they were mentioned in different sutras. It wasn't all in one location. These names of the different stages are all mentioned. Thank goodness have commentaries where all of those different sutra informations have been compiled, and then explained so that we can see the big picture before we decide to start our career, our effort.

Again, level 9, placing the mind evenly, meaning reaching this stability or this equilibrium of mind at our demand. On demand is the key here. On demand and that's necessary in order to reach the platform from which we can see emptiness directly.

That's why this is also important in ACI. Because we're trying to learn how to cultivate the circumstances through which that realization can occur so that we really can help others in that deep and ultimate way someday.

Luisa: Just understand, when I reach level 7, then is when the problem 5 arises. Then I don't want to adjust, because I feel comfortable. But then I have to adjust and I reach level 8. But I am missing a bit between level 8 and 9. What happens? What is the switch. What do I do? It is just by planting the seeds and staying there that I switch to the next one?

Lama Sarahni: It becomes more and more familiar. So I misspoke from level 7 to level 8. If we don't correct, which is level 4, we don't ever pass level 7.

So problem 4 comes in at level 7, not correcting.

Then once we get to level 8, we correct at the beginning and then let go.

If we keep correcting, like we're correcting at the beginning, we don't ever get to level 8, because we're still correcting. It's not level 8 until we let go and let it flow.

Then level 9, you don't need any of that, because your obstacles are all overcome. Thanks for clarifying that.

I don't know if this will help or confuse, but Geshela did these drawings and these aren't exactly his. So level 1,

Level 2, like dashes,

Level three, that's supposed to be a straight line.

The point being, the gaps are so short.

Then we get to level 4, which means there's not going to be any gap in my line at all. But at level 4, suppose an upgoing line is agitation and a downgoing line is dullness. So at level 4, we're on the object, but we're, it's like this on the object:

As we're applying Sheshin, and correcting for agitation and dullness, it's going to become more 4, 5 a little smoother:

Then we could say as we get better at what we did to go from 4 to 5, it's going to be more like this, smoother still, but still this up and down happening.

In level 7, I don't know, can you see it?

And level 8, oops, that was supposed to go straight, straight. I can't do straight anymore. But you get the idea:

Then level 9 is:

Imagine your mind on the object (making upwards and downwards gesture).

Then it smooths out a bit.

Then it smooths out a lot and then it's still doing the adjusting, but so much easier. So much smoother. Feels so good. Maybe this is good enough.

And I did say, Maybe it is good enough.

But maybe it's not good enough in the face of our world.

So we make effort, and our continued effort at level 7 makes our sheshin, drenpa, et cetera, smoother and smoother until we find, Oh, I just need to set it up at the beginning nicely and then it'll go.

But if we keep up the adjusting, it stays at level 7.

Level 8 still being adjusted equals level 7.

So when we overcome the obstacle number 5, fixing something that's not broken, we move from 7 to 8. Then, getting more and more familiar with that, we move from 8 to 9. Don't need the effort at all.

The gymnast stands onto the balance beam, the music starts and she just does her routine. That kind of meditating.

It's not like being a perfectionist because of all the baggage that goes with perfectionism. It's like being so familiar, and so motivated, that it's easy, it's enjoyable.

The meditation practice is easy and enjoyable to get to level 9.

But those qualities of easy and enjoyable take on their own life at level 9. Which is what turns level 9 into the quality called Shamatha, Shiney in Tibetan.

Because of those qualities, high qualities of ease and pleasure on the object, that's how the mind is able to not lose the object when we crack the object open and look into its lack of self nature.

If we didn't have the practiced ease, that concentrated mind—you could say would get scared by that no self nature of the object, and it would pop us out. So we need to be at ease and in pleasure for that mind to hold the radicalness of the empty nature of the object. Technically even conceptually, to be able to get there accurately.

The quality of mind has to be so comfortable, that it's willing to go there. Shamatha.

Level 9 is the platform from which Shamatha can arise, and Shamatha is the platform from which a special insight—HLAKTONG—can arise.

That's why we're talking about the 9 stages, because we want to cultivate it.

We can train in it just like we would train as an athlete or a performer. It takes that much effort, but no more than that, technically. It's a lot of effort. But what we're trying to achieve is so beyond the benefits of being a gymnast with the gold medal, or the really famous pianist that hopefully we will get motivated enough to try.

Question from the chat: Do you realize you move through the stages while in meditation or after?

After. After you're out. You would be able to think back on that particular session and say, Hmm, I think that was level 5, somewhere between 4, 5 and 6.

When we were at Diamond Mountain, Lama Christie taught (??? 1:14:21) courses, which were meditation courses, but they were really emptiness courses. But our requirement was an hour of meditation a day for her class, and we had other classes. Then we had to keep a journal, we got to keep a journal, a meditation journal. And what she wanted to know in the meditation journal was the highest level we thought we reached and how long we thought we were there. Then she wanted to know a little bit about the meditation topic. She gave us one, but then she wanted to know what we learned. So we weren't writing big, long diatribes. She just wanted short and sweet. She read them all. She didn't comment. Sometimes you'd get a happy face, sometimes you get a sad face. She didn't really comment, but you knew she was watching.

So, between me watching and taking notes, and her watching, me watching her watching, my ability to fine tune my meditation was so much greater than if I wasn't tracking it. So I continued to track it all the way through great retreat. And then I've gotten sloppy. I quit tracking, and I see that it's made a difference in the quality of my meditation. So, it's worth figuring out some method for yourself, as soon as you're done, just think back, Oh, that was barely a level 1. Just write it down. Say, okay, I'll do better tomorrow. Don't beat yourself up, perfectionist.

Just say, that was my experience and we'll see what it's like tomorrow.

But it does bring up a great question.

Every moment of our meditation is seeds ripening, results of past behaviors.

Every moment we're in meditation and trying, and we have our mind on the object in particular, we are not harming others.

So just by being on a meditation object, we're gathering more goodness than we would if we weren't trying to meditate.

That goodness is going to grow our overall goodness. And our overall goodness contributes to our ability to go deeper and deeper into meditation. Meditative results, our results born of our ethical living, we've learned.

If we're having trouble with our meditation progress, you don't actually try harder on your cushion, you try harder off your cushion.

Where am I disturbing others' minds?

Where am I interrupting?

Where am I overworking somebody so they're getting dull?

Where can I adjust my interaction with others to help my ability to

focus on my meditation object improve?

We work off the cushion to improve our on cushion time.

It's more effective than sitting down on our meditation cushion and saying, I work so hard at this. Because that doesn't work, does it?

Especially with meditation, you can't just work harder and make ourselves better.

We all know that, or you wouldn't be in a class like this.

Some people work really, really hard at learning to play the piano, and they're still, No thank you. Don't want to listen to them.

Others make no effort whatsoever, and they learn to play beautifully.

Same with meditation.

So, if you know somebody who, I mean, how do we judge? But they seem to be a really great meditator. If you've got some of those in your life, rejoice like crazy, because whose seeds are they coming from?

Yeah, yours.

So if you've got seeds to see them as a good meditator, you know can I please have some seeds to see me as a good meditator?

That's how we get those teeny little seeds to grow.

It really is still all about karma and emptiness, whether or not our meditation will progress through these.

Does that mean we don't have to make any effort?

No, we do.

The likelihood of getting good at meditating by meditating an hour every Sunday is about as good as thinking you'd become an Olympic gymnast by doing gymnastics an hour every Sunday.

It's just like, it takes more seeds than that. More seeds planted, more seeds ripened to do that.

But don't work harder on your cushion. Be kinder off your cushion, always dedicating it to reaching, becoming one who can help in that deep and ultimate way. And our progress on our cushion will go more smoothly. It will still have ups and downs. Life happens. When we've overcome the first obstacle, now meditation is as important as brushing our teeth. It's important as doing the laundry, and it fits into life, because we see its benefits for ourselves and others. We've investigated enough. We really want it. We're willing to do the effort. Then the effort is just the time spent and the paying attention, the tracking.

Luisa, that's been a long time for your question.

Luisa: It's okay. I'm sorry. I'm going to go bit back to the technical part and not the inspirational part, what you were.

Lama Sarahni: I get credit for the inspiration.

Luisa: Just for my understanding. When we are at level 9, then when you say, this will bring us to the platform called Shamatha, that will bring us to the insight, Vipashyana, that they will give us the direct perception of emptiness. This level 9 brings us to the platform. It's a bit confusing to me. What do you mean? Because for me, you are already at the platform level 9, like you are already at that level? That's one question. And the second question is, you say at level 9, I should switch from the object to the emptiness of the object without effort. That means before seeing emptiness directly is not that, like the meditation objects before seeing if there is directly is the emptiness of the objects. Is it correct?

Lama Sarahni: To reach level 9 means that, when you're a level 9 meditator, when you sit down for just about any meditation session, regardless of your meditation object, set the object into deep meditation you go. Doing that again and again and again and again grows this, it's called practiced ease, a physical practiced ease, and a mental practice ease. This isn't part of this class, but it's just to clarify what you brought up. Level 9, again and again and again, gets more and more pleasurable physically and mentally.

When our meditative concentration includes those pleasures, there's actually 4 of them, that's the actual platform from which we can then penetrate into the true nature of the object that we're using for that meditation session.

Now, that is not to say that we're not going to try to penetrate into the emptiness of the object, even when we're a level 1 meditator. But from a level 9 plus the practiced eases, when we turn our mind to the conception of the emptiness of the object, our conception of the emptiness of the object will be more clear, more easy to stay focused on, more pleasurable, because the mind is already at that state of ease and pleasure. So we will repeatedly turn our mind intellectually to the empty nature of our object. There's the Buddha, the appearing Buddha is my seeds. Where's the Buddha that's not my seeds? That's intellectual.

Then something's going to happen. Our mind's going to start thinking, and then we're going to catch it and pull away the appearance, and rest in the absence intellectually. Again and again and again. Which we will then use our ability to hold fixation, now on the Aha of appearing Buddha and nothing other than that, to be able to fixate on that absence. It's really difficult. And it takes a mind that is under such powerful control to be able to do that, intellectually, by imagination first, by subtle conception further. Sooner or later that Aha becomes so full, fully experienced, it becomes direct.

And that's the direct perception of emptiness.

So we're trying to cultivate the circumstances for that to actually happen.

Could it happen spontaneously? Effortlessly? Absolutely.

Shall we just wait till that happens? No.

Okay. Hope that made it more clear.

Luisa: Yes, thank you. Lama.

Okay, so stages 1 and 2, there's very little concentration, very little concentration on the object. Let's be specific.
Level 3, we're on it more than off of it.
Level 4, we've gained actual fixation. We're on the object, but agitation, dullness, swinging around, and we're correcting to the best of our ability.
4, 5, 6, 7. The agitations, the dullness, the gross versus subtle that we talked about. All that's happening in those levels. So on any given day, well, you may be able to work your way down and you're at level 7, but the next day you can't get off 4. This 4 through 7 takes a while to learn the nuances of making those corrections. Until maybe we have a string of a month or two or more even, where, whoa, you sit down and you're in level 7, but you can't ever quite get to the place where you let go and let it flow without it sinking or agitating again. Which means we let go of 7 too early and we went backwards into 6 and 5. And the only way to know that is to do it and see what happens. These are all experiential.

Then 8 and 9, our ability is so good that at 8, you just have to fine tune it at the beginning. And at 9 it takes no fine tuning at all.Like anything you're good at, you just step right in and you do it.
At level 9, you have a mind that's a powerful tool that's under your control. Again, we all have the ability for TING NGE DZIN. We just don't have the ability to turn it on and off on demand. It's related to some quality of the object or circumstance in our outer world for our single pointed concentration to come up. But imagine what it would be like, if you had that tool in your pocket. You wouldn't turn it on all the time. You don't need single pointed concentration on waiting for the bus. But you'd be able to turn it on at work when you need to get that project sorted out? Whoop, problem solved.

Then you need somebody to implement it for you. How to help them do that. It would be pretty intense, actually. You might not make friends turning your single pointed focus on and off at work. But a really powerful tool, we can see, that our mind has the capacity to do. As humans, we have the capacity to do this. All of us.

It'll be easier for some than others because of seeds. To what extent have we disturbed the minds of others, this life and past ones? We can't really answer that question. You would only have to say, Well, I must've disturbed them a lot because I've tried for a long time to meditate and I haven't gotten anywhere. But have you really had the instructions on what to look for and how to do it? Or have you been trying to train as a gymnast without a coach?

The likelihood is less if we try to get good at something without somebody who knows how to teach us what to do. But then we have to do it of course, we have to do the work.

Tip: Meditation Journal

Your memorization asks you to just learn the names of these 9.

But really more important than the names is to think of that sequence and how the mind moves from the puppy dog. I love the puppy dog analogy.

You have a puppy. It doesn't even know where to go to the bathroom. You're going to teach it and you need to be consistent in your teaching this puppy. Or they're going to be so confused. One day you say pee on the paper, and the next day you say pee outside. What do you mean?

Do it the same way every single time.

Then they get to the point where you're going to teach 'em how to sit and stay. You sit them down: sit, stay. And they run around. No, come back, reward, sit, stay.

Pretty soon the puppy doesn't even have to hear the words. They see your sign. They sit right.

They stay for as long as you need them to, if we are consistent and persistent with the rewards of when they do sit and stay that puppy can go on to become a seeing eye dog or a police dog or a lassie, because of our consistency in instruction and our correct and reward. So our minds need the same thing.

Figure out what it means to correct and reward to get your mind back on the meditation object. Maybe your meditation object smiles a big beaming smile at you when you're back on it. Or they blast this love to you when you're back on it.

Reward yourself in some way. Because otherwise you'll beat yourself up every time you find yourself off the object. That won't improve our meditation.

Then track, figure some way to track yourself. Wow, 10 minutes at level 3. Hooray. Write it down.

I actually use muscle testing. That's how I check myself. I just needed a tool. But whatever works for you to be able to think of your most recent session.

Was I on the object more than I was off it?

When I was on it long enough to recognize dullness or agitation, which one was more common?

Was I thinking too much or nervous about it?

Or was I just thinking I was doing well enough but not really alert?

Only you can say. But to write it down is really helpful even if you never look at it again.

All right, that's all I have to say. Are there more questions about it?

You just have to try it on for size. I'm sure.

Q&A Class 7

Siau-Cheng: Could I ask the question?

Lama Sarahni: Okay. Yes, please. Monica, your hand went up first.

Monica: I am trying to better understand and grasp this idea of agitation. Is it something that you feel physically, like your mind starts to hurt or… No?

Lama Sarahni: No, it isn't really physical. It's a quality of my mind. One kind is a quality of my mind that just keeps thinking about it. So mine are not visual. I have to mentally hold the thing. So for me, agitation is having to continually reinforce that it's there or what's there. Gross. Gross agitation. And then more subtle agitation is this sense you're on the surface of something, but there's something moving underneath. You're aware of the movement underneath, but you're not actually experiencing it. It's that something's trying to get away, because it's not so engaged in the object that it's staying fascinated by it. So there's a part of my mind that really wants to jump off. There's some tension to hold it on, agitation.

It is fair to do a meditation session or more than one where you intentionally explore what it would be like to be agitated, and recognize the difference between agitation and your mind just jumping all the way off the object. That's distraction. Agitation comes before distraction. So if you can be on an object long enough to catch the agitation before the distraction, or be aware enough of your distraction to notice the agitation it came from. You'll be able to make this distinction.

Siau-Cheng: Yes, several questions, but maybe the first one is, how do I get motivated to keep sitting on the cushion? I find that it's very hard after maybe a week, a month of daily practice, I start to laze off and then try to spend less time on the cushion. How do I keep myself motivated?

Lama Sarahni: What are the four antidotes to laziness?

Siau-Cheng: Think of goodness

Lama Sarahni: Think of what it's going to benefit you,

Siau-Cheng: And then determined to do it to be a good meditator. Make the effort to do it, and experience the pressure. I know the theory.

Lama Sarahni: I know, I know, I know. Well then.

Siau-Cheng: I do know how to reward myself for that.

Lama Sarahni: There's a lot of different ways to think of it. It's like for some, I don't know, it's kind of scary to become a good meditator, because you become aware of the changes that you're going to create in your world. And maybe there's a part of us that doesn't really want to do that, or doesn't really believe, or is afraid we might be successful. Ewww, gads. We might really see emptiness directly and, Oh my gosh. Do we really believe that we could do that?

What if there's a part of us that doesn't really believe? And if we're starting to get close, it's going to do something to make us back away.

This tradition calls those demons, but they're not outside things. They're our own deep inner stuff that does need to be looked at, does need to be brought up. So, different ways to look at: Why am I sabotaging myself from my meditation cushion? And see what comes up, and how you talk to that saboteur. Either boot them out or get them on your side. Better to get them on your side than to try to boot them out. You'll find something, my guess, and you'll go, Oh, that's silly. And it'll be fixed.

Siau-Cheng: Thank you.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. Did I cover both your questions? You had a couple of questions.

Siau-Cheng: No, I think I'll leave it to other people to ask first.

Lama Sarahni: Okay. Thank you. Who's next?

Natalia: Thank you for allowing other people to ask. So my question is, I also have two questions. I find myself easier to meditate when I'm in a group than by myself. Why is it? And I have another friend who is easier to meditate by herself than in a group. I was wondering why that is.

The other question will be about some Shamatha and pleasantness of meditation. So we don't get to have this until we get to level 9, correct?

Lama Sarahni: Okay. We will very, I hope that we'll feel the pleasantness of meditation from level 4 on up. But this specific quality of experience called the Jingyangs that make what we were calling a level 9 meditation now be Shamatha, they are very unique and specific, and they only occur after reaching the level 9 consistently. They aren't really explainable other than that, until we have some ability to feel what it feels like to be on the object with that no effort, that we can start to glimpse what this thing called practiced ease could be like. The best is the analogy of the professional anybody, and the ease and pleasure with which that gymnast steps onto the balance beam, or the concert pianist begins their piece.

That quality increased considerably is what we mean by Shamatha.

Your question about the group and the single. There's this classic analogy they, if you're holding a single pencil, it's really easy to break, but if you hold a whole lot of pencils, it's really hard to break anyone. So they say there's an advantage in meditating in a group like that. Some people prefer the group meditation, because it makes it easier for them to not get broken. Then other people, they're the confident pencil in the middle of all the rest, and they feel like, too much, let me out of here. I want to meditate on my own. It's just a matter of seeds and experience and effort.

If we want to become a career meditator, you would have to live in a group who's meditating daily in order to make your practice progress. Whereas being learning, training your own meditative practice on your own when you are with a group, then you're helping the whole group get better. So you can do both.

Natalia: Thank you.

Lama Sarahni: What else?

Luisa: May I give a suggestion or something that helped me in the past to Siau-Cheng to go back to the cushion. As I mentioned the other session, I don't know why. Out of the blue this year, I have this kind of drive to sit until now, and I hope it continues. So I am planting seeds now.

Lama sarahni: Thank you. We're rejoicing.

Luisa: But before when it was like that, what you say, you try and then you are excited for some time, and then it just disappears. I have been helping as a volunteer for this time to the Diamantklub for, I forgot the name now, anyways, to promote the wisdom. And then I had talked to the director of that club. I told her about my meditation issues, and then she say, how long have you tried for enough, like a considerable length? And I told her, I don't know what is a considerable length, like one week? And she's like, No, at least three months. And I said, No, I haven't tried. And then she told me, okay, in the next three months, try and commit to me that you're going to do it. And then I had this kind of social pressure or this kind of, I committed to someone else, not to myself to do it. So I'm going to do it. And then many times I just did it like 15 minutes before 12, the end of the day just to have it in my app. I meditated three months to show her that I try. So maybe, I don't know if this will help you, but then commit to someone else that you maybe feel respect to. Or if you have already your Lama, at least for three months, it's also what they say for new habits, you need to do it at least for three months in a row to stick to it. Just as an idea.

Lama Sarahni: Good advice. Good advice. Anything else?

Siau-Cheng: Since there's no other people asking question. Let me ask another question. It's regarding the object of meditation. Suppose I choose the object of meditation. There's the Buddha, the image of the Buddha. Then during the meditation, is it considered a distraction if I just focus on the particular part of the Buddha body? Or should I always be fixing on the whole image of the Buddha? Can I just move around and look at different parts and try to focus on the different part of Buddha? Was that considered distraction or is that a…?

Lama Sarahni: Right. So when you start, you say, my meditation object is an image of the Buddha, the whole Buddha. And if what we're working on is our level of fixation so that we can recognize our dullness and agitation, then you want to get the whole picture in view. And as long as you have the Buddha there, you've got some level of fixation. If the Buddha is there, and then suddenly you realize I'm thinking about lunch. If now there's some mental image about you and lunch, you've lost your object. If you're still visually looking at the Buddha, but you're thinking about lunch, you technically haven't lost your object. It's not gone. But you are clearly grossly agitated, because you're off to lunch even as you're looking at the Buddha. Now, so you pull it back and you're on the Buddha, but you're looking at the whole Buddha and you're starting to get a little bored with the whole Buddha, and your mind's sinking, sinking, sinking. If it keeps sinking, pretty soon you're going to be thinking about lunch. And you're either subtle dullness, gross dullness, or completely off the object again. So you come back, get agitated again, you come back.

One of the tools that we use to stay clearly on the whole object as our mind is sinking, is that we do look at their different parts. Oh, Buddha's eyes, so beautiful. You're zeroing in on the eyes. The whole thing is still there, but you're zeroing in to bring the mind up bright. But you wouldn't want to go: eyes, ears, nose… to stay bright. That's verging on subtle agitation.

You would go to the eyes to get bright, and then back to the whole thing. Do you see how to use it?

It depends on one's intention and purpose of moving around the different aspects of your visualization. If you're just doing it to stay, if you're just doing it, that's agitation. If you're doing it on purpose to correct for dullness, then you're making a correction.

Siau-Cheng: I see.

Lama Sarahni: But then the tendency is to go off and keep making the correction instead of letting go.

Siau-Cheng: Thank you so much. And thank you, Louisa.

[Usual closing]

Thank you so much for the opportunity to share. I love you. Have a great weekend.

Class 8: The Object of Meditation

28 January 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Class 8

Vocabulary:

Jok-gom

Shar-gom

Che-gom

Yonten shir gyurma

Lam rim

Je Tsongkapa

Ra-dreng monastery

Prajnaparamita sutras

Prajnaparamita

Madhyamika

Vinaya

Abhidharma

Pramana

Welcome back. We are ACI course 3, class 8, eight on January 28th, 2024.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Usual opening]

The last class we learned about the 9 stages of meditation and the homework asked us to learn them. It even said memorize them. Anybody actually do it?

I've done it a zillion times, which tells you I never did it at all, right? Because by the time I come back to do it again, I have to do it all over.

But remember. You think of the next one as I say the first one.

Put the mind on the object.
Put the mind on the object in a stream.
Put the mind on the object patching the gaps
major step between three and four. Place the mind closely on the object, meaning we're finally on it.
Bring the mind under control, meaning we're working with the agitation or dullness that we find while we're parked on that object without going off it anymore. Bring the mind under control.
Make the mind calm.
Make the mind totally calm., The bicycle whoa to seven, easy.
Bring the mind to single pointedness, which means we take the effort at the beginning and then it's smooth going after that. And
Place the mind in deep meditation, which means all we have to do is sit on our cushion and turn on the meditation object. We're in that effortless zone we could call it on the object.

In the ACI courses, that's about the extent of the instruction we get on learning to meditate. It's like those classes about the obstacles and the corrections and the levels, apparently that's all we need to know.

It left me hanging. I needed to explore and et cetera. But I was so involved in a lot of stuff that I didn't take the time to go search out an actual meditation teacher.

Then, when we reached our bok jinpa classes during Diamond Mountain, the first year of classes was more instruction in how to do it.

But even then, I felt like the ones who were teaching me to meditate were like a natural athlete trying to teach a not natural athlete how to play their sport.

In my athletic career, I had two coaches.

One was a coach that was not a natural athlete, and so had to learn and try, and figure out how to learn the skills to become a decent volleyball player. She did, because her team played in the nationals when I was a little girl. So they got good. Curiously, in learning how to play herself, she taught other people how to play. We understand well, that's why she got good.

But then, when she was then teaching teenagers, she already had this system. You know, put your foot like this, you hold your hands like this, you turn your body like this. So that's what I thought a coach does.

Then I got to college, and I played for the college team. The coach for the college team had been on the US Olympic team, and she was such an athlete. She was good at baseball, she was good at tennis, she was good at anything she took up. And she would say, just serve the ball like this. Just set the ball like this. This is what I want you to do, but show me how to do it. She’d go like, Just do it. Because for her, she could just do it. You see it, you do it. I couldn't do that. I needed to break the steps down. So I had sort of the same seeds ripening when I got to my meditation coaches. Just do it. Check your own mind. Fix it. Do it. We've taught you what you need to know. Do it.

I'm not being disrespectful. How can somebody get into my mind and say, If you look at it this way, or if you turn your mental attention that way… But nobody can do that for us.

Book recommendations

But there are people who have made it their career to try to describe them, fine tune the details of what it feels like, what it means to get to these different stages.

One of them is John Yates, who was an Arizona fellow. He's passed now.

He eventually wrote a book called ‚Mind Illuminated‘, which is a really good how to manual, and he is in a combination of the mindfulness movement meditation group. But he's very well educated in Je Tsongkapa. If you're looking for more material to dig into, that's a really excellent book. I haven't used the whole thing. But the parts that I have used and read seem to right on.

Then another Buddhist teacher, not in our Gelukpa lineage that I'm aware of, is Alan Wallace. He also is a really excellent meditation teacher. He's got many books. One that's particularly useful and newish is called ‚The Attention Revolution‘, and it talks more about the mind and the states of mind and the qualities of mind and can be very helpful.

Then Lama Christie wrote a book called ‚The Tibetan Book of Meditation‘, which isn't an instruction book in how to meditate. But it's a book of the most traditional Tibetan Gelukpa meditations, and they're written like a guided meditation so that we can learn the meditation topic. If you're looking for different topics, How do I meditate on the impermanence of my body? How do I meditate on these different Lam Rims? That's a good resource too, but it's not a How-to manual. It's just a lot of different meditations that are quite beautiful.

Then during Diamond Mountain Days, one of the students, Brian Pearson, who was a student of John Yates, and a student of Geshe Michael, he taught a series of courses he called ‚Samadhi Sunrise‘ after what the mind feels like when you reach Samadhi. I don't know if those recordings are available in the knowledge base or if there are recordings left from Diamond Mountain days. It's an open teaching. If you can get those recordings, it's another person describing these levels of meditation from his own experience level. It can just be helpful to hear another person describing them. Again, I'm not sure if those audios are even in existence, but they can be useful.

The 3 Kinds of Meditation Objects

Tonight's class, classes 8 and 9, are speaking to the meditation object. What we meditate on. Which was that last subject matter when we first started class, we said, eventually we will get to what is the meditation object that we're going to use.

There are three kinds of meditation, this tradition teaches there are three kinds of meditations.

One is the fixation meditation. Another is called review meditation. And another is analytical meditation.

Vocabulary in Tibetan

JOK-GOM Fixation meditation

SHAR-GOM Review meditation

CHE-GOM Analytical meditation

Fixation Meditation

When we were speaking to the 5 problems, 8 corrections, 9 levels, we were thinking, I have this single stationary meditation object in my mind, and I'm learning to fixate on that object without jumping off, and then correcting for dullness and agitation. The object itself stays the same—the Buddha image.

Maybe it starts to smile, maybe it starts to talk to you. Maybe those kinds of things can happen and they're fine. But it's not that when we're first learning, our meditation object is that Buddha going to lunch, then going to a teaching, giving a teaching.

Eventually our meditation skills will be such that our meditation object could be, What's the Buddha teaching today? And up he comes in our meditating screen and we listen to him give the Prajnaparamita, and as long as we're not jumping off the object, that whole movie is our meditation object.

When we get to Diamond Way Creation Stage, that's what our meditations will be like: a very involved movie that we run with great intention in order to plant certain seeds in a certain way. To be able to do so, we need this ability to focus our mind on the object at our determination for as long as we need it to stay there.

When we are first learning, it's difficult to learn to stay single pointedly focused and make all of those adjustments, if our meditation object is doing all kinds of stuff. Because we have to be making it do all kinds of stuff, right? It's all inside here (pointing at her head).

So when we're first learning, we pick a single object that's going to stay put and we focus on it and we work with whether we're on or off of it.

When we get to the place where we can fix on it and stay, and that that's the effort that we make for our meditation session, we are doing what's called fixation meditation. JOK-GOM.

That's the best one to use to train ourselves to be able to assess our meditation level, to be able to learn what works for us to correct for dullness and agitation, and what it feels like to get to level 7, 8, 9.

Review Meditation

Then SHAR-GOM is a meditation in which we are mentally reviewing some topic that we've learned. We would have an outline of a particular topic that we've learned about, and for this meditation we're going through our mind, the outline. We're just saying it to ourselves. If you're a visualizer, you visualize it and you can read it to yourself.

You review it forwards, you review it backwards, you review it inside out, you're burning it into your mind.

It's being done in a meditative position and with a meditative state of mind, but you can see how difficult it would be to learn to fix agitation, dullness, if our whole meditation object is to think this, then this, then this. Now, what was that one? Wait, well, how did this one go to that one?

You can't at the same time go, am I dull? Am I…? It's just too hard. But once we have that skill, we apply it to this review meditation. When we are reviewing with this really tightly focused mind with ease, that we burn those outlines in, very swiftly, very easily.

It becomes a more fun meditation in a sense, because you do it a few times and then you end up back in class and you get the quiz, What were those nine stages? And you open your mouth and they just come flying out. Because of that burning it in during your sit. But burning it in with this highly concentrated mind, not the one that's sloppy, dull, agitated. That doesn't go in any faster than if we were doing it. Well, it doesn't go in much faster than if we were doing it outside of meditation.

Analytical Meditation

Then the third kind of meditation, CHE-GOM. It means an analytical meditation.

CHE = to cut through meditation

This one is taking some concept that we've learned about and we're debating it with ourself. We argue it: yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. Until we reach some kind of a conclusion in our debate, our argument. Some kind of insight will arise, and that insight, that Ohhh, I call it the Aha, but not everybody understands what I mean. When you reach the Aha, you then fixate, you shift to fixation meditation on the Aha from your analytical meditation. But your Aha is a concept that you understood in one way, and now you understand in this new way. For your fixation on the new way, the mental words stop, and you just sit in that conclusion.

Can you see how difficult a fixation meditation on a concept would be, if we haven't already trained ourselves in the ability to fixation on a mental image that we're holding there?

So we start learning fixation. But we'll come back around to it in this not so visual way, rather in a conceptual fixation, as once we have developed these skills to be able to hold our mind on it.

We might think then, Oh, I should only do fixation meditations on an image of a powerful karmic object, like Buddha or my Lama, until I reach at least level 7, even better level 9. And then I'll have the tool that can do the review meditation and the analytical meditation.

Pabongka Rinpoche, he says, Look, if you have some property that has room for some fruit trees, and you want to have lemons, apricots, and apples, you don't first plant the lemon tree and wait until it's mature and making lemons before you plant the apple tree. You don't wait until both the apple tree and the lemon tree are producing fruit before you plant the apricot tree. You plant all three, when it's appropriate in the yard to plant them. You cultivate all three, and they all three mature reasonably closely together.

Before too long you have lemons in season, apples in season, apricots in season.

In the same way, even as beginner meditation, they suggest that if we've given ourselves 10 minutes as our start meditation time—we've done the preliminaries—out of our 10 minutes I'm going to do the first 4 minutes with a fixation meditation with the object that's stationary, Buddha, my Lama, whatever. I'm going to intentionally pay close attention, make the adjustments, see how well I can stay on that object. I'll use that first 4 minutes to work on my understanding of the obstacles, my understanding of the meditation levels.

Then, when that four minutes is done, I've got six minutes left. I'm going to use the next, you choose, 3 minutes to do a review meditation. Maybe on those 9 levels. I'm going to think them through. I'm going to try to explain them to myself. I'm going to try to remember if I can name them forward and backward.

When my timer goes off, then I'm going to pick one of them, one of those 9 stages, and I'm going to do an analytical meditation. Do I really believe that stage of meditation can get me to my goal? You just argue it with yourself. It's like, Well, I don't know how to argue it with myself. Right. Which is why we learned of logic and the methods of debate through the course of all the ACI, so that we have this skill to be able to not waste our own time when we're doing the argument with ourselves.

When we do the argument, we're pulling away possibilities. In 2 or 3 minutes we maybe won't ever come to a conclusion. But the idea is, if we get to a conclusion in our argument with ourselves, we then stop and park on that conclusion. Maybe we never get there actually, because we've used up our 3 minutes and our timer's gone off. That's fine.

If we do reach the Aha, then you park on that Aha until your timer goes up.

Then you do a dedication. You can do like what we do at the end of class. Oh, whatever I did I'm going to use to help that other person. Thank you, holy angel, here's the goodness I just did, and then give it away after that, that you're offering and dedication at the end.

It takes a while to get these three meditations woven into a comfortable daily practice. We really don't have enough yet to do that. So if you're starting newly on your meditation career, I would suggest that you work mainly on the fixation, and finding a correction for dullness that works for you, finding a correction for agitation that works for you, and focus on that for most of your 10 minutes.

Then use some part of your 10 minutes to review and/or analyze the topic of meditation from the class that you are on.

Then each week you add one minute as we've learned. As you add minutes, you'll also be adding content to your meditation over time. But if we overload ourselves at the beginning, we won't train in the skills that we actually need to get proficient.

Background on the Lam Rim

In our tradition, the meditation objects come from a teaching called the Lam Rim, that we're mostly all familiar with. Lam Rim means Steps on the Path to Enlightenment.

A text that receives the name ‚Lam Rim‘, or is accepted into the genre of teachings called Lam Rim, necessarily include in them all the steps that we need to learn about and realize, make real, in order for our transformation from suffering human to fully enlightened being to come about.

A text that describes all of that in detail is voluminous. Lam Rim Chenmo is huge and difficult. There are shorter versions and shorter versions. The shorter versions are said to be complete, but they're complete for the person who can read between the lines, and knows what this verse is referring to in the extended version.

You can pack all the steps of the Path to Enlightenment down into the shortest version of a Lam Rim, which is 14 verses, Lama Tsongkapa‘s „The Source of All My Good“ prayer. It's held to be complete.

If we know what could be… How do you call it when you have a little tiny thing and then you blow it up, and there's a whole lot more information, and then you blow it up again and there's a whole lot more? There's some word for that. The Lam Rims are like that.

The topic Lam Rim, it came into popularity from Lord Atisha putting together a whole lot of teachings from other places. He brought them all together into something that came to be known as the Lam Rim. Others did it after him, Je Tsongkapa also. But it's not that these masters made these steps up.

The steps of the path to full enlightenment were taught by Lord Buddha through the Prajnaparamita Sutras. Perfection of wisdom sutras, there's more than one. Each one is a compilation of multiple teachings given at a given period of time at a given place. Then, fortunately, they got written down by someone who heard them and had a telephone recorder going on in their head while they listened. So they were later able to write it down, which is why those sutras almost always start with „Once I heard this teaching“. Because somebody has written it down.

Within those various teachings, Lord Buddha was telling people, this is what needs to happen first, and then second, and then third, and then fourth.

Following that recipe, we will end up with the cake.

You want a cherry chocolate cake? You find a recipe. You gather the ingredients. You mix them all together, like the recipe says. If you get a cake, you're going to get a chocolate cherry cake, because that's what you followed the recipe for.

The Lam Rim is the recipe for your future Buddhahood.

Put it all together like the recipe says, and you can't help but end up with that result. You change the ingredients a bit, you leave some stuff out, ou don't cook it long enough, you don't cook it at all. No cake, no Buddha.

Lam Rim is there complete, based on Lord Buddha's teachings that taught a little here, a little over there, a little over there, according to the audience.

So thank you to those teachers that somehow were able to have all of those at their convenience and they said, Oh, this would be the sequence, and put it all together for us into these texts called the Lam Rim.

It comes in an outline, it comes in a series of verses. But then the Gelukpas love lists and outlines, so they make us this outline. It's a long involved one, because the outline's going to be what unpacks the verses.

Anyway, Je Tsongkapa‘s shortest Lam Rim is a prayer called YON-TEN SHIR GYURMA.

The Source of All My Good

YON-TEN SHIR GYURMA means The Source of All My Good, and it's an instruction to one of his students. We can use it in the same way.

It gets the title „Source of All My Good“, because those are its opening lines.

„The source of all my good is my kind Lama, my Lord.“

We know Je Tsongkapa’s dates 1357 to 1419. This particular text he wrote while he was staying at Radreng Monastery. I don't personally know the significance of that. But he wrote this synopsis of the Lam Rim in a very short form.

It has been memorized and used in the monasteries ever since.

Any Lam Rim text, to be complete—which is what makes it Lam Rim—needs to include within it the gist of the material from the five great topics of the open teachings of Buddhism.

No one of those five great topics contains all the instructions to complete our path. It takes all of them together.

Then there's a sixth category of teachings, and that's the Diamond Way. A complete Lam Rim will cover the five main topics, and it will mention, it must mention, the Diamond Way, the secret way, or it is incomplete as an open teaching. The Lam Rim can't go into detail of the Diamond Way, but it would be incomplete if it left out the mention of it. So we'll see it in Lama Tsonkapa‘s prayer. It is not just that he mentions it. He spends a couple of verses on it.

The 5 Great Texts (open teachings)

(46:20)

These five texts that need to be the material of which needs to be included in a Lam Rim is

the subject matter of the Prajnaparamita, the perfection of wisdom. The subject matter of the perfection of wisdom is emptiness and karma. The practice of the six perfections, the Bodhisattva‘s path… Lots of stuff inside Prajnaparamita.
That Lam Rim will also address the teachings we call Middle Way, Madhyamika. The middle way between things exist in the way that I perceive them, and if they don't exist like that, then they can't exist at all. Highest middle way says things exist by way of our projections. Our mind hears, Projections? That's not real. Off the cliff. Learning to swing back and forth in our awareness that my mind's believing things exist the way they look, and catching ourselves thinking that, No, if they're just projections, they're not real at all. And bringing ourselves back to the middle way to reach that conclusion of, Yes, they're projections. They've always been projections, and that's what makes them real. The way why they're real in the way they look is based on my own behavior. Middle Way to be Middle way needs to trigger this conclusion, My behavior. I create these things.
And so another topic that must be within the Lam Rim to be complete is the Vinaya, the discipline. What behavior do I want to stop doing and start doing that is going to help me make my world be more pure, more happy, less suffering. The ethical living guidelines.
Then also in the subject matter is what's called the subject matter Abhidharma. So we hear Abhidharma and we automatically think, Abhidharmakosha, that one textbook. Most of what Abhidharma refers to is covered in that textbook, but Abhidharma means Higher Knowledge. Here it means higher knowledge than ordinary. It doesn't mean higher knowledge than Madhyamika, Middle Way. But it's that explanation of all existing things, the 5 heaps, how seeds work. It's the details that we will use to work our way through the different levels of understanding what's meant by karma and emptiness. It's like our learning how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide so that we can do calculus later. Abhidharma.
And then Pramana, means logic. Clear thinking. It actually means valid perception. How do we come to recognize valid perception? Correct and incorrect. So many, many, many details about perception, perception theory Buddha taught. We tend to forget and think it's those monks that taught all that stuff. Buddha taught the need to learn logic, to logic out what we think is true using what we've learned in Abhidharma, using what we've learned in Vinaya to track our behavior so that our karmic goodness can move us into the higher ways of seeing our world, so that we can gain the wisdom through which we can actually do our deeds with the wisdom necessary for our deeds to become the causes of our Buddha.

These are the 5 main topics of Buddha's teachings.

Within these 5 main topics, we have those two categories of level of understanding called the Hinayana and the Mahayana.

Hinayana means the lesser vehicle, lesser vehicular capacity. Volkswagen versus the great big semi-truck.

Mahayana, greater vehicular capacity.

The difference being our motivation.

Hinayana level, what we intend to achieve is our own closing door to lesser rebirth and reaching our own freedom from mental afflictions.

The Mahayana takes the leap when we think, Well, but what about everybody else? We understand the principles well enough to recognize that it would be unsatisfactory to reach our own freedom from mental afflictions if we can't help others reach that also. We come to see that it's very difficult to help others overcome their mental afflictions from just my wanting to do it. There are many other factors involved. So our Mahayana heart opens.

Of these 5 textbooks or topics of material, the Prajnaparamita, the Madhyamika and teachings on Pramana are within the Mahayana teachings.

The Vinaya teachings and the Abhidharma are the teachings that are the Hinayana.

We may say, oh, I'm Mahayana. But we can't just step into the Mahayana without having cultivated or already cultivated the Hinayana understanding. So the Mahayana gets built upon the Hinayana understandings, realizations.

If we try to skip grades, it doesn't work so well. We'd only be able to skip grades if we had tremendous seeds from past lives of Hinayana effort, Hinayana work. But without cultivating those seeds, and trying to jump right into Mahayana without that strong in this life foundation of the Hinayana, we're very likely to have trouble making the progress that we would need to make.

The analogy that comes to mind. Say you're really, really smart kid, and by the time you're 12, they put you in college. You're so smart, you can do college classes. But then part of college is—what do we learn in junior high and high school that we would miss? Part of college is knowing how to keep your books in a locker, and you never learn that. Although you're really, really smart in math and physics, you don't know how to keep your books in a locker. You can't remember where it is…

Do you get my silly analogy? If we skip grades, we think we're being really effective, but we've missed some major component that eventually is going to come back to get us. So build the foundation and the Lam Rim helps us to do that.

Any Lam Rim necessarily covers all the subject matter and the essence of the subject matter to take us from suffering being to fully enlightened to being. They cover all those five books, and the secret teachings will be mentioned but not explained. You have a question, that is the answer to, on your homework.

Keep in mind that the Mahayana teachings, Prajnaparamita, Madhyamika and logic did not get transferred into all countries that received the earlier Buddha‘s teachings. Buddha's career, Abhidharma and Vinaya was part of his teachings. They happened all throughout his career.

When teachers took them to other places, they would start from the beginning with the new people. Some of those places of new people never received the teachings on Prajnaparamita, Madhyamika or Pramana. And so their main focus was is on all the sutras called the Dhammapada and the teachings on Vinaya, and how things exist and do not exist.

There's nothing inaccurate about those teachings. From a Mahayana‘s point of view they're simply incomplete. They don't bring us to total Buddhahood. But if that's not your goal, to get to total Buddhahood, then your teachings on Vanaya and Abhidharma are complete, right? This Vinaya and Abhidharma is enough to change our behavior such that we can reach Nirvana.

Let's take a break and we'll actually talk about The Source of All My Good.

(Break)

(Q&A during break - audio not on the recording)

Question on the term Sutra: The sutra are the same as the Yoga Sutra and the Buddha Sutra book?

Lama Sarahni: No. In this tradition, the term sutra almost always refers to the words, the words of Shakyamuni Buddha. So Shakyamuni never wrote his stuff down, somebody else did it. But what they wrote down is apparently a word for word memory of what was said. And when that compilation of writings were reviewed by the other people involved and accepted, they're called the sutra, a Buddha sutra.

Then in this tradition, that would almost always mean if you're studying a sutra, you are studying from the words of Shakyamuni. Then there are different categories of those teachings. Some are Vinaya, some are Abhidharma, some are perfection of wisdom, et cetera.

Rarely just to confuse things, there are commentaries that are called sutra. But then it only means a short book. So there's a Vinaya text—not a sutra—by not a Buddha teaching, but a text called the Vinaya Sutra by Master (Gun Paraba?). It just means a short book on Vinaya. But then in the yoga tradition, Yoga Sutra, the term is more being used as the essence, the essentials. So it is a short book and it is the essentials, but it doesn't mean words of a Buddha. It's a whole different tradition. So how that tradition uses the term sutra, I'm not sure.

Student: That's like short phrase? It's not like a comment or something, but it's more like a short phrase. And all of it was originally in Sanskrit? Because I understood that the Buddha taught in Sanskrit. So what we're learning translation from Tibetan, correct?

Lama Sarahni: Correct.

Student: Is there not actual descent group that we're learning it from?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, apparently there was a time in India when the libraries of the Buddhist works in Sanskrit were destroyed, and fortunately the Tibetans had both, gone to India to translate them and taken some back with them. But they couldn't take all of them. So I don't know how they know, but they say that there are many, many Sanskrit Buddhist teachings that didn't get translated and are just gone. We don't have access to them. So every now and then there are Sanskrit versions of some of them that are available, but the most complete inventory of the Buddhist scriptures apparently are in the Tibetan language. Then they also got into Mongolian, they also got into Chinese as well. And there are some Sanskrit, but not many. Unfortunately.

So that's the urgency in translating, is that worldly. It appears that fewer and fewer young people are learning to read and write and speak Tibetan. And so theoretically we're going to run out of people who can read those scriptures, whether they understand what they mean or not, just to be able to physically read them, they'll be out of our access.

One has to intentionally learn to read and write Sanskrit, but as I understand, I don't know that Sanskrit was ever so much a spoken language commonly.

Student: I might be wrong, but I think I heard Michael Jensen said, because someone asked him if Sanskrit at some point was a spoken language, and he said that yes, it was a spoken language. As in people having, I don't know about common, but people having conversations in Sanskrit. That's what I understood from what he said, but it might be good asking him for more details.

The 4 Great Divisions of a Lam Rim

(62:00)

A Lam Rim complete teaching has basically four divisions.

Then, within those four divisions, the outline can be really compact or it can be really expanded. But when we understand the four basic ones, it gets us started.

The root of the practice, which is taking a Lama and how to relate to them. It involves coming to recognize we need a teacher, deciding we want one because we can need one and not want one. And then wanting to know who qualifies to be my teacher, and what am I going to do with that teacher? How are they going to help me? Lots of factors about a teacher that we want to know about before we even start on that path.
How to practice after we've taken that teacher. Within that practice is this process that the Mahayanas say, Purify and make merit. Just purify and make merit, that's all we have to do. But how we do that expands that outline big time.
Requesting help in our practice. It's not like these are going, First you do this, then you do this, then you do that. Each one is building on the next, and the requesting help in our practice is something that is a recurring theme through all of them.
Making prayers to meet the Lamas and achieve our goals, meaning from life to life. It would also mean meet the Lamas, if in your life your Lama passes, you're still praying to meet them again. Long story what that's going to mean. But we get guidelines for how once we've set ourselves on this path and relying on a guide, what we do, when that guide does not appear to be available to us anymore. Which happens. It happens.

The root of the path, division number 1, taking a Lama, it has four parts of its own. Who are the ones who love outlines? I know Rachana is going, Ooh, I love this class.

The root of the path

1. Part is developing faith in the Lama

What we mean by Lama is someone who we see as higher than us in some way. Lama just means hire one. It means spiritual friend. It means our guide. It means someone we look up to. In this tradition, it becomes used as a personal honorific. There's a fondness quality to it, but also an honoring them with it. It's not a term that anybody needs to use to be Buddhist or to be a Tibetan Buddhist, not at all. But we get the idea of the quality of the title that we give to this person that we're coming to see in this certain way that we are going to rely upon.

We're going to devote our mental and physical real estate, Heshe Michael says, to this teacher. We wouldn't do that if we didn't have some kind of faith in this person that they know what we need, that they're trustworthy, they're not going to abuse me in some way. They're not going to take advantage of me. There's all kinds of criteria that we should be concerned about before we say, You're my teacher. Because it's a really serious relationship that we're choosing to step into.

So thank goodness the teachings tell us the criteria and the feelings, and what we should look for, and they encourage us to don't make this decision lightly. Don't make it fast and think about it carefully.

It kind of helps our confidence in the path that it's a path that says, Yes, you need a teacher, but don't be so quick to find one. Really check it out, understand it well first. Develop faith in the Lama.

2. Step is how to think about them? How do we relate to them?

3. Part is how do we act towards them?

4. Part is to develop our reverence for them by way of recalling their kindness

These are the first four steps in just starting onto the path to the end of suffering, either our own or others. The very first step is developing faith in a teacher.

There's a pre-step to that, which is even coming to some kind of conclusion: I need help.

We've studied the three principal paths: renunciation. Without renunciation, there is no reason to talk about taking a spiritual teacher. To sure take a soccer teacher and you might want to do the same kind of thing. Do they know what I need? Are they going to be there for me even when I'm lousy? You might want to apply the same thing, but for a spiritual teacher, until we're feeling lost and alone and nowhere to turn, and nothing's ever worked before? Until we reach that, we're not even ready to talk about having a spiritual guide.

So presumably, if we're here in this class and continuing to come back, we're at least close to understanding the advantage of putting ourselves under the tutelage of a spiritual guide.

10 Qualities of a qualified teacher

Our next question would be, who are they?

What qualities?

How would I know them if I come across them?

What do I have to check for somebody who was like, Whoa, maybe they might be able to do that for me.

Don't just leap. Sutra teaching says, check them out.

Lord Maitreya gives us the 10 qualities of a qualified Lama.

Then Lama Tsongkapa says, You know, it's really hard in these degenerate times, 1400s in Tibet, to find somebody with all 10 of those qualities. So at least you need these five. Then, later on he even says, Well, if you can't find those five, well then look for these five. So we'll get these different criteria.

The 10 qualities of a qualified Lama, I'm just going to tell you what they are. Future classes, we go into them in greater detail. Many times actually, to the course of our career. There are reasons we need to hear it at different levels, at different times. So this is the first intro for some of us.

1. You can determine that they are practicing the 10 moralities

What are the 10 moralities? I'm asking, really. Who knows? What are the first three of body?

Siau-Cheng: No killing.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. No killing.

What's the second one?

No killing, no stealing, no sexual misconduct. Yeah, in the 10 moralities, it's no killing anybody. Anyhow, no way, to the best of our ability. Yeah, no stealing, no sexual misconduct. Then there are four of speech. Remember? No lying, no... What's the second one?

Joana: No divisive talk

Lama Sarahni: No lying, no divisive.

Siau-Cheng: No harsh words.

Lama Sarahni: No idle, right, no lying, no divisive, no harsh, no idle. Then we've got three of mind. The wording is a little weird sometimes with that one.

Siau-Cheng: No ill will.

Lama Sarahni: No ill will. Actually the second one.

Joana: No jealousy.

Lama Sarahni: Jealousy. Not being unhappy when someone gets what they want. Not being happy when someone gets something bad. Avoiding those things.

And the last one, wrong world view, which is a long story of what it means there. Basically, nah, karma and emptiness, nah, no such thing as future lives. If we don't have some understanding of the continuity of our mind, and the fact that we reap what we sow is true, then all the rest of that doesn't matter.

The 10 non virtues.

They are living according to the 10 moralities, meaning they're avoiding those things and doing the opposites. You can see that in their behavior.

2. Having mastered concentration

Second, they've mastered concentration. I don't know how you'd actually know that. Because it means they have the meditative concentration that when they sit in meditation, they're actually on their object. Maybe they've got a really, really still body and inside there they're going, ahhhh, duh. We don't know, except that it shows up. Their level of mindfulness off the cushion gives you a clue to their level of mindfulness on the cushion.

Again, these are qualities that we're spying on them.

3. Having mastered wisdom

Then third is they've mastered wisdom.

Wisdom means, here it means they have a deep understanding of emptiness and independent origination, and we can see that they live by that.

The first three are these qualities that we're judging them by their behavior, looking for these specific clues that they probably have, the morality basket, the concentration basket, and the wisdom basket.

4. Knowing more than the student

5. Willing to make great effort on behalf of the students

Then number five, we want a teacher who's willing to make great efforts on behalf of the students. If you're going to devote yourself to somebody, you kind of don't want them to be the one that says, don't bother me. Go ask somebody else. No, I don't want to teach the ACI course 3 for the 15th time.

That's not the attitude that you're looking for in your teacher.

Now, it might show up from time to time. I apologize if I ever did that to anybody.

6. Understanding the scriptures perfectly

Number six, they understand the scriptures, they say perfectly. How are we going to know that?

But they understand the scriptures, they are well-studied, well-trained.

7. Should have perceived emptiness

Number seven, at best at what we hope is that they’ve perceived emptiness directly.

Lord Maitreya said, they should have perceived emptiness. Our training automatically thinks that means ‚perceived it directly‘. But every time we do the pen thing, we all perceive emptiness. Intellectually, by logic, we get a little glimpse, and every time we do it chips away at our belief in its identity in it, from it. The more times that we hear ourselves metaphorically doing the pen thing for ourselves or others, the more we're chipping away at our grasping to things and self, having a nature inside.

Eventually the direct perception of that truth makes a bigger shift, like a huge whopping shift. Ideally, we would want our teacher to be someone who has had that direct experience.

You wouldn't want your spiritual teacher to be someone who doesn't... you know, here's the pen thing and says, Yeah, but the puppy still chews on a pen.

There are many people who can hear the logic and go along, along, along, and then you go, And so? And they go, And so? The dog chews on a pen.

We just don't have the seeds. They can be very kind, and very moral, and very good meditators, but the emptiness escapes.

We want somebody who at least has this high intellectual, conceptual understanding, enough to where they live by it. We already had that in quality number 3.

Then as part of number 7, their descriptions of what it is to experience emptiness directly are internally consistent with their behavior, and consistent with the scripture about it. So that we can personally compare to come to a conclusion about their experience.

8. Skillful teacher

Then number eight, we want them to be a skillful teacher.

9. Should love the students

Number nine, their love for their students will be evident. We want a teacher who loves their students. Maybe we don't think we're so lovable, but if we see them loving other students, it's like, well, maybe they'll love me too. Or the other way around. Yeah, they're loving me, but how can they love that guy? And if they do love that guy, whoa, they've got something I'd like to know about.

But something that we can perceive about them.

10. Don‘t tire if teaching the same thing again and again

Quality number 10 is they never tire of teaching, even if it's the same thing over and over again. Because we're going to keep asking the same questions over and over again.

At least in our own minds we're going to. And if we're brave, we'll keep asking them too until we get it right. That teacher knows, and will never going to tire.

Again, Lama Tsongkapa says, whoa, it's hard to find somebody with all 10 of those qualities in these days. Lama Tsongkapa says that.

He says, look, okay, five qualities will be enough.

The first three again relate to their morality, their concentration, and their wisdom.

They live according to the three trainings.

They're at least trying to improve their morality in order to improve their meditative concentration, in order to improve their intellectual understanding of emptiness and karma, so that they can improve their morality, so they can improve their concentration, so they can improve their understanding.

Do you see how those three go together?

Number 4, they have perceived emptiness intellectually or directly.

Then number five, they love their student. It's clear that they have concern for their students' progress.

Then they go on to say—I am not sure who's saying this—but if times are so degenerate that you can't find anyone with those five qualities, then at the very minimum, these would be the five qualities that we're looking for.

Number one, they say there's a division between worldly attitudes and Dharma attitudes. We want a teacher who's devoted mainly to their Dharma attitude.

So if we're looking at this teacher, is their focus of attention worldly? Or is their priority appearing to be their Dharma life? They may still very well have a job, have a family, but how they're relating to the job, relating to the family is through this doorway of our Dharma practice, our spiritual progress. Or do they have this big separation?

Here's my worldly life, here's my Dharma life, and there's this big gap between.

We're looking for the one who has brought the Dharma into their daily life.

Second one in the division between concern for this life and concern for future life, they are working mainly towards future life needs. They're not involved in their life and world with either using the Dharma or using worldly means to get some benefit in this life.

So we're in Sutra, and it doesn't mean our this life won't benefit from our Dharma career. It will. But our goal is beyond this life goal. Which means we would need to have this really clear identification with the ongoingness of our—this tradition says our mindstream—the ongoingness nature of our subject side.

I remember believing that when my body died, I'm dead, and that's fine, and I was cool with that. Until I had a personal experience that says, you know what? That is incorrect. Then whah, what now? But without that understanding that what I do now is creating circumstances for my eons of future, then that eons of future circumstances is more important to me than my next 30 years.

Because it is much more of it until we're identifying with this ongoing nature.

I don't want to say me, because Sarahni is not going to go on. But this subject side is.

Why did I go off on that?

We want our teacher to be one who's got this perception of their ongoing nature, and they're working in this life for the circumstances of those future lives.

Now, what they're working for, we're going to come to understand according to what they teach us to create for ourselves. Presumably that's what they're doing for themselves, and they're ahead of us on the path in doing so.

So in the division between this life and future life, their focus is on future life needs, circumstances.

Then in the division between self and other, guess what they're focused on: other. You can see through their behavior that their concern for others outweighs the old worldly self concern. Now, as we understand more and more about karma and emptiness, and the practice of exchanging self and others, it's not that we're victimizing ourself to put others first. It's that we're expanding our sense of self to include others, and then it's easy to do. But that practice of expanding self to include others is hard to wrap our mind around until our seeds are such that it becomes pretty obvious actually.

We can tell that they are one who is willing to put others' needs ahead of their own wants. Let's say that.

Then number four, is they are not careless with their physical, verbal and mental actions. That's consistent with the earlier qualifications of the one, two, and three. They live by the morality, the concentration, and the wisdom. Only here they're just saying they have a high level of mindfulness and they're careful.

Then number five, they teach the student a wrong path.

Somehow we figure out about this potential teacher that they have a path that works, and they won't teach me a wrong one. I don't quite know how you do that.

Because you could say, Are you going to teach me a wrong path?

It's like, No, of course not, but let's go to Brazil and do that ayahuasca stuff. Which in this tradition would say, yeah, go do it if you want. But that experience won't be valid enough to help you stop your suffering in the long term. It would be a wrong path, not bad, right? You could do if you want, but you get my idea.

But if you ask the teacher straight out, Are you going to teach me a wrong path? They're not going to say, Yes.

So how are we going to figure that one out?

Don't be in a hurry.

We're supposed to spy on them before we decide.

Who can be a Lama? All right, that's question seven.

I would like to read to you the text. Most of us know it, but in case we don't, let me give you the oral.

Wait, no, I don't have it, and then I'm going to embarrass myself because if I say I can recite it to you, I'll get all mixed up.

It says, the source of all my good is my kind, Lama, my Lord.

Bless me to see that taking myself to you in the proper way

Is the very root of the path.

And grant me then….

See? Rachana is saying it. Unmute yourself, Rachana, and fill in the blanks.

Rachana: Serve and follow them with all my strength and reverence.

Lama Sarahni: Serve and follow you with all my strength and reverence.

So the verses go like that. Bless me with this. Bless me with that. Bless me.

You have a homework question that says, what does it mean to bless me?

Let me take the time to read it to you.

I'm going to go fast. I have a little bit more to talk about, but I want to let you hear it. Okay, ready? So just listen.

The Source Of All My Good

Written by Je Tsongkapa Lobsang Drakpa

The source of all my good Is my kind Lama, my Lord;

Bless me first to see That taking myself to him In the proper way

Is the very root Of the Path, and grant me then

To serve and follow him With all my strength and reverence.

Bless me first to realize That the excellent life

Of leisure I have found Just this once

Is ever so hard to find And ever so valuable;

Grant me then To wish, and never stop to wish,

That I could take Its essence night and day.

My body and the life in it Are fleeting as the bubbles

In the sea froth of a wave.

Bless me first thus to recall The death that will destroy me soon;

And help me find sure knowledge That after I have died

The things I have done, the white or black,

And what these deeds will bring to me,

Follow always close behind, As certain as my shadow.

Grant me then Ever to be careful To stop the slightest Wrong of many wrongs we do,

And try to carry out instead Each and every good Of the many that we may.

Bless me to perceive All thats wrong with the seemingly good things Of this life.

I can never get enough of them. They cannot be trusted.

They are the door To every pain I have.

Grant me then To strive instead For the happiness of freedom.

Grant that these pure thoughts

May lead me to be watchful And to recall What I should be doing,

Grant me to give The greatest care

To make vows of morality The essence of my practice;

They are The root of the Buddhas teaching.

I have slipped and fallen Into the sea Of this suffering life;

Bless me to see That every living being, Every one my own mother,

Has fallen in too.

Grant me then To practice this highest Wish for enlightenment,

To take on myself The task of freeing them all.

Bless me to see clearly That the Wish itself Is not enough,

For if Im not well trained In the three moralities, I cannot become a Buddha.

Grant me then A fierce resolve To master the vows For the children of the Victors.

Grant that I may quickly gain The path where quietude And insight join together;

One which quiets My mind from being Distracted to wrong objects,

The other which analyzes The perfect meaning In the correct way.

Grant that once I have practiced well

The paths shared and become A vessel that is worthy,

I enter with perfect ease The Way of the Diamond, Highest of all ways,

Holiest door to come inside For the fortunate and the good.

Bless me to know With genuine certainty

That when I have entered thus, The cause that gives me Both the attainments

Is keeping my pledges And vows most pure.

Grant me then To always keep them Even if it costs my life.

Bless me next To realize precisely The crucial points Of both the stages,

The essence of The secret ways.

Grant me then To practice as The Holy One has spoken,

Putting all my effort in And never leaving off The Practice of the Four Times,

Highest that there is.

Bless me, grant me that The spiritual Guide Who shows me this good road,

And all my true Companions in this quest

Live long and fruitful lives.

Bless and grant me that The rain of obstacles,

Things within me Or outside me That could stop me now,

Stop and end forever.

In all my lives May I never live Apart from my perfect Lamas,

May I bask In the glory Of the Dharma.

May I fulfill Perfectly Every good quality Of every level and path,

And reach then quickly

The place where I Become myself The Keeper of the Diamond

Thank you, Ale.

Bless me. Please bless me, please, it keeps saying. It sounds like we're asking them, just take your magic wand and give me these realizations. Don't we wish that they could do that? I'm guessing they wish they could do it too. It would start a long debate. It's like, why can't they do it? Why can't they make the seeds to do it, and then see themselves do it? Maybe they do see themselves do it, but if I don't have the seeds to see them do it to me, it doesn't matter how many times they bonk me on the head with their magic wand. They can't change our karma.

If they could, they would have already. What it means to become a Buddha would've made them instantly fix all of our karma if they could.

It's too long a story to go into. But if we're not asking them to just bonk us on the head and fix us, what is the blessing that we're asking for?

What we're asking for is or what we can receive. No, that's not quite right either.

The result of our asking for their blessing is for us to perceive ourselves with an increased ability to learn and practice the Dharma.

We're asking them, bless me, to be able to blah, blah, blah. And by asking, the implication is we are asking them because we have the perception that they already themselves have already gained that realization, that ability. To hear ourselves asking them to help us gain that ability, helps our own seeds. Add to seeds we already have, helps them come forward as our own experience of our own increased ability to put into practice what they're teaching us.

They can teach if we ask. Only if we ask. Not meaning there's some law that they won't open their mouth until we ask. But meaning our own mind has to hear ourselves ask in order to be open enough to receive the nuances of what they're going to share with us.

It's our own need to hear ourselves ask, please bless me with this. Please bless me with that. Understanding that what we're asking, what the result of the asking is going to be our own increased capacity to change ourselves because of what we've heard them say to us.

It's helping us stay inspired by them. Helping us stay inspired by our own practice efforts. It's an act of humility that increases our capacity, which as our capacity increases, so could our pride, and that would become a blocker.

So the system has built in this continued recognition that they have something that I can still learn from them, and please help me do it.

Then in the commentary it says, we want our practice to be eager and enjoyable with a little bit of a sense of urgency. But not so much that it makes us crazy.

So they say, our practice could be a hungry cow who comes across a patch of grass and they just go for it.

Or like a thirsty person who comes across pure clean water and just guzzles it down.

Or like a Bodhisattva who finds an opportunity to do something for someone and they just rush in to help.

Or a student with great aptitude gets a teaching, takes it right home and starts living it. Like, tries it on for size right away, because they're so eager in what they've learned.

We're begging for this ability to be like, Oh, I heard what she said. I know how I can put that into my own life, starting tomorrow. I'm going to try. And half the time, by the time tomorrow comes, we've forgotten. Okay, it'll come next time.

But the eagerness, the excitement, the interest that we have when we first hear a teaching, we want to pounce on that, and use it however we can as soon as we can. Because the next time we hear that teaching a part of our mind will go, Yeah, I've heard that one. Right? We can't help it. It will be a little familiar.

Then we'll hear it a third time, and by the fourth or fifth time we're going, Yeah, yeah, I know. I know, I know. That attitude is a blocker.

The more eager we are to put a teaching that we freshly heard into practice, the more able we are able to hear something new, even when we hear that same teaching again. Not meaning the same class, but we're going to hear the 10 qualities of a Lama again and again and again. We want to hear something fresh each time instead of, Yeah, I already memorized those. Do I have to do it again? Yes.

It's our own attitude.

So the first verse, The source of my goodness is my kind Lama, because they're the one who will teach us going through that outline according to our own need.

Then the main way, the next section is about serving them. Which really means helping them in their task to help others stop their suffering.

The main way to serve the Lama is to put into practice what they teach.

So for the teacher to see their student behave in a certain way within an area of conflict where you would expect an ordinary person to yell back, and we see the student wait and not yell back.

That makes the teacher really, really happy.

They actually want to hear about that stuff. We don't tend to take a relationship with a teacher and then brag on ourselves. But we're supposed to. Whether you do it directly or you do it in your mind, it works both ways, which is why the rejoicing part is built into our seven limb prayer. We're supposed to brag on ourselves.

We tend to brag on other people, but the instructions say, Tell them more good stuff about you that you did, something specific. Then yes, something somebody else did is great. They want to hear it. They do hear it, even if it's just in your meditation.

If you can't say, Hey, I really did put that in practice, I hope you're happy with me. Then just do it in your meditation. That's great.

It's not for their benefit, it's for our benefit. The students' benefit.

Geshela says, the main sign that we're serving our teachers well is if we ourselves are getting happier.

My own personal experience is there's a lag time there. But, it finally catches up.

The reading that we have is not The Source of all My Good.

The reading that we have is the Thousand Angels of Bliss.

So we'll get into how you use the Lam Ram in the process of using this Thousand Angels of Bliss Prayer as your meditation preliminaries—if you choose to do that. It's a very beautiful practice once you learn the practice. But we don't actually learn that for a while. So don't get confused.

What I read is different than what's in your reading.

But what I read is what we learned in course 2, right? Didn't we learn Source of my… No, no, we learned it at the beginning. Oh, okay.

Source of All My Good Practice module is a separate module. It teaches a guided visualization that takes us through these steps on the path of enlightenment.

Sumati has offered to teach that practice module over a long weekend soon, probably sometime in February, according to the ACI platform. If you haven't done it and you want to do it, he loves that practice. He teaches it beautifully. Feel free to watch the ACI platform and take it from him. If you've taken it before from somebody else, still feel free to take it from him because it'll be different. Different perspective, different ideas, different analogies. So feel free. Everybody will see it on the platform when it comes up.

That was our class eight.

[Usual closing]

Thank you again very much for the opportunity.

Class 9: Getting the Essence of Life

1 February 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Class 9

Welcome back. We are ACI course 3, class 9 out of 11. How about that? It is February 2nd, 2024. How about that?

Let‘s gather our minds here, please, as we usually do.

[Usual opening]

Review Class 8

Okay, then what were those three types of meditations that we're learning how to weave into our daily practice ability?

Joana: There's the fixation meditation where we try to fixate our Lama or another holy object. And then there's the review meditation, trying to remember some things, steps, things that we've learned, burn them in our mind. And the last one is the analytical meditation. I call them problem solving. Usually I think about problems. So try to apply logic or karma and emptiness and try to figure out what to do.

Lama Sarahni: Nice. Good.

Then what is it that Lam Rim means? Anybody.

Natalia: Steps on the path to enlightenment.

Lama Sarahni: Steps on the path to enlightenment.

Where does this genre of teachings called the Rim come from?

Monica: They come from the teachings of the Buddha that were spoken and people would hear them and that they would write them down.

Lama Sarahni: Right. And in particular, in what category of the Buddha‘s teachings are they found?

Ale: Prajnaparamita Sutra?

Lama Sarahni: Prajnaparamita. The perfection of wisdom sutras.

(9:50-13:00 solving tech problems with interpretation)

Within a Lam Rim, there must be at least five categories of teachings included in it to be a Lam Rim. Meaning it speaks to the material from five different, they call 'em books of the Buddha‘s teachings, but it's not literally a book. What are those five? It's actually more than five.

Siau-Cheng: Yeah, the perfection. The perfection of wisdom, Prajnaparamita.

Lama Sarahni: Perfect.

Siau-Cheng: And then they have the Middle Way, Mahyamika, and then the Vowed Morality, Vinaya. Then the other one is Higher Knowledge, Abhidharma. And the last one is Logic, perceptions, that’s Pranama.

Lama Sarahni: Nice. Yeah.

What's the one that's just mentioned as a teaser?

Luisa: The secret teachings.

Lama Sarahni: The secret teachings. Right. Good.

So last week's class started our topic of what topic do we choose for our meditation career. And all of a sudden we're talking about the Lam Rim. The reason is that the Lam Rim teaches us those different steps that we then apply to our lives and to our meditation until each one of those steps, we‘ll gain a realization about it.

So we gain that realization about it in a state of deep meditation.

Each one of those steps qualifies as a powerful karmic object. Because our intention in studying them and meditating on them is in order to help us grow the qualities and characteristics through which we can come to see ourselves able to help that other in that deep and ultimate way.

So it is true that our meditation object can be any being or object that we perceive as divine, or representing the divine. Divine meaning something that represents our highest goal that we're, as we understand it at whatever level.

Then it's interesting that they say, yes, that's a good object of meditation for training our ability to concentrate like we talked about. Then we can use those powers of concentration to then pursue these realizations of each step along the path of this transformation that we are at this point just gaining enough information about it to decide, Yeah, I really do want that.

Studying the steps of the path helps us see more clearly what the teachings on the steps of the path have to offer us. At each stage, it's up to us to investigate that teaching and decide is that what I want to learn? Is that the goal I'm reaching for?

We need to start at the beginning, but we also kind of need to have some idea about what that final goal is in order to even want to start at the beginning.

Most of us, we have this big picture to some extent already, and we're putting together the pieces of that puzzle as we go along.

The very first step of the Lam Rim is finding a teacher, we learned.

There are four parts of that first step about finding a teacher.

Those four parts were

developing faith in that teacher
how to then think about them, meaning how to use them. It sounds bad, but that's what we're supposed to do, is use them to help us grow through these steps of the path
then how to act towards them.
And then number four was developing our reverence for them, meaning our faith at the beginning grows into more and more devotion as we interact with them and watch their behaviors, and watch the behaviors of their other students. Check what they teach us against other teachings we've learned, against our own personal experience.

We'll learn all the different tools that the teacher teaches us so that we can always check and be sure that we ourselves feel that we're under good guidance and that we are making progress. In this tradition, you are always free to say, Thank you, but no thank you. At any level you are welcome to walk away.

At the beginning before class started, came up about cults. It is interesting because the words of all of these teachings, if you had a cult mentality or you were looking to make a case that ACI is a cult, you could come up with it. So each of us' responsibility is to not participate in that way. Which means our participation is always from continued clear understanding, seeing changes, positive changes in ourselves, seeing positive changes in our outer world. But all of that can be on delay. We don't see it tomorrow or next week.

But nobody in this tradition is going to force you to stay.

If they do, run away fast.

As Tom pointed out, if the leader of the group is not holding themselves to the same rules being applied to the group or higher even, then there's something wrong going on. Coming from our seeds? Yes. Happening? Yes.

So you say, Thank you, but no thank you. If in your perception it's turning to be like that.

Why am I talking about that? Because the first step, the first realization is about, I need a teacher, and this teacher needs to have certain qualifications so that I can trust them. So that I can rely upon them. Then once we make that decision to rely upon them, the task is to increase our devotion to them.

It could be mistaken to say, once you devote yourself to a teacher, you belong to them, and they can do anything they want to you. There are actually teachings later on, actually says that. But by the time we get there, we'll understand what it's referring to. It doesn't mean what the words say.

Get the Essence of your Life

In order to even be interested in having a spiritual teacher, we had to have already reached some level of renunciation. Meaning some level of recognizing that things just don't work right in our world, in our human world. It became unsatisfactory and we went looking for something, somebody that could explain what we're doing wrong.

Then, if that explanation makes sense, if we have the seeds to hear it and the seeds to investigate it, and check it out, we decide, Oh, okay, I want to learn more.

Then, when we do step onto the path, we devote ourselves to this teacher, and then we say, What do I have to do?

They'll say, Take the essence of your life. Get the essence of your life.

They won't say anything more traditionally unless you go, What do you mean by that?

At every step of the way, traditionally the student needs to ask. Which is why we always start class formally asking.

We can learn the Lam Rim from somebody who's sharing it. That does not mean that that person who's sharing it automatically is this Lama that we're talking about, your personal spiritual guide. We can say, We're here in class. We have a certain amount of renunciation, because we are interested in this stuff. You're the one who's teaching it in the timeframe that I can be here. Thank you so much. I will learn about the Lam Rim from you.

Then, suppose sometime in the future you meet somebody that seems like a better fit and they're the one you ask, Will you be my spiritual teacher?

Then they'll know where to pick up or what to teach. They'll know and they'll help for that. So don't feel like just because you're studying Lam Rim with me, that automatically makes me this high holy object for you. Not at all. I'm being the messenger for whoever your high holy object really is that can't be here with us today. I'm just the messenger.

Suppose you have your teacher, and you say, Please, please, please help me stop perpetuating my suffering world. What do I have to do?

They say, You've got to make the most out of this life.

Take the essence of this life.

It's like, What do you mean? How do I do that?

They'll start the process.

It means we've asked the right question and they'll start.

First after taking the Lama, the first step is asking them what to do.

They say, Get the essence of your life, and then how to do that.

That's all within this first step of taking a teacher:

Get the essence of your life, they'll say. We go, How?

And they‘ll teach you how.

So in the Lam Rim, what's being called the root text here, is our

Source of All My Good prayer, apparently the shortest of all Lam Rims and complete in every way, if you know the Lam Rim well enough that you can read between the lines.

So we're learning:

Verse 1

The source of all my good is my kind Lama, my Lord.

Bless me first to see

That taking myself to them in the proper way

Is the very root of the path.

Grant me then to serve and follow them

With all my strength and reverence.

That covers the:

Meeting them. What qualities we should be looking for. Our growing faith in them. How to think towards them. How to act towards them. And how to continue to grow our our reverence and devotion to them.

All of those qualities, they're in that person, right? In them, from them, right?

Wrong.

Oh, so you can pick anybody? Just pick somebody off the street?

No, that doesn't work either.

Our seeds will ripen to see somebody as special. Still check them out.

How are we going to have the seeds to see somebody with those qualities?

We need to be somebody with qualities that somebody else admires.

Do they have to be, I have to be somebody's teacher? Not formally. But have we been somebody who've helped someone else learn something that helped them function better in life?

Parents, did you do that with your kids? Gosh, at least you taught them to talk, and read, and tie their shoes, and get dressed, and oh my gosh. Those of us without kids, there are others that we've helped in various ways, so that we can have these seeds grow into the seeds to see a teacher who has what we're looking for, whatever that is.

Yes. Luisa, you're a hand went up a little while ago,

Luisa: What you were mentioning before, that you say all these of taking the Lama and asking the little summary that you just made before you shared the screen.

Give me one second, I review here. Yeah. When we ask the Lama, and then I ask them how to do, and they say, You have to take the essence of the life.

This is which of the four parts of the first step? Or is this the whole first step?

Lama Sarahni: This is after the first step. The first step has those first four. And then once we have that connection to that being, we say, Now please teach me. What do I do?

Luisa: This is after the reverence part?

Lama Sarahni: After the reverence part. Now our relationship with that teacher is going to continue all through our relationship with them. So it's not like we finally get our reverence and then we're done. So these four steps of taking a Lama, we don't finish them and go on. We carry them with us all the way through.

But once we have this relationship with the teacher, we ask.

What do I need to do?

Get the essence of your life.

How do I do that?

Okay, I'll teach you.

And in this particular text, that's when verse two comes in. Verse two is the first thing they actually teach us when we say, How do I get the essence of my life? What do you mean? How do I do that?

What do I need to know to be able to take the essence of my life?

So we move into verse two.

Verse 2

Bless me first to realize that the excellent life of leisure

I have found just this once

Is ever so hard to find and ever so valuable.

Grant me then to wish and never stop to wish

That I could take its essence night and day.

The first thing the teacher points out is, You've got this precious opportunity. It is so rare and so special, don't miss this precious opportunity. They're going to follow with reasons what circumstances we have, and what circumstances we don't have, that make this life so rare and special.

But just to hear: This excellent life of leisure I found just this once.

Do we really believe it?

On the one hand, if our belief system is still: When this body dies, you're gone, you're dead. And you want to be on a spiritual path, well then you better get going. Even if you're starting when you're 18 years old, even if you do happen to have a lifetime that's going to last to be a hundred, you've only got 90 years to carry it off if you don't have a future life to work with.

Then is this precious human life valuable? You bet.

But we're speaking within a cultural background where people do believe in past and future lives. Maybe they don't really know why, either why it's true or why they believe it, they just do. But regardless, if we have this understanding of past and future lives, wouldn't it make it a little bit harder to be motivated by the Lama saying, Look, you've got this precious human life only once.

It's like, no, I am going to get another one. In fact, infinite lifetimes, right? So what's the hurry Lama?

So one piece in this cultivating the realization of taking the essence of our life, is to grow our own deep connection with this understanding of how rare and special this life is. If we say, I just don't see that this is so rare and special, I'm one of soon to be 9 billion humans on this planet, that doesn't feel so rare and special.

So one way that you would use this Lam Rim as your meditation object for your analytical part of your meditation, like Joana said, a problem solving. You are in your state of deep concentration and you say to yourself, Do I believe that this particular life is so precious and so valuable that if I use it for usual human worldly things, I'm missing an opportunity that I can't be sure I'll get again. Just debate it with yourself.

No, no, I'm making enough human karma that I'll get another human life. Then well, how can I be sure I'm making more human karma? What kind of karma makes a human life? In a way, we don't know enough information if we've just started into this Buddhist path, we don't know enough information really to do the problem solving.

So it may be early on that the problem solving conclusion is, Gee, I need to learn more about this so that I can really come back and gain this realization about the preciousness of this human life. The more we learn and then go back and revisit our different steps in the path, the deeper will those understandings go until we actually have them as a realization.

But even then, our realizations of these different steps can get more fine tuned as we change, as our practice changes us, I guess is what I'm saying.

The 8 lacks and 10 Fortunes

The 8 Lacks

(40:40)

That teacher will, if we say, I don't know that I feel so special, the teacher will say, okay, listen, you have these eight lacks that are an opportunity and you have these 10 things you have that make you special, and 10 things you don't have that's good to not have, that makes this life special.

They're called the leisures and fortunes, or resources and opportunities, Geshe Michael tends to call them.

When we hear about these 8 and 10 and then really stop to think about the ramifications of those circumstances that we have, and check to see if we think that because we have those circumstances now we can expect to have them in a future life? To come to see, Oh, maybe I am, maybe I'm misunderstanding something. Maybe I do have this precious opportunity that I can take more seriously, that I want to take more seriously. Because of our own conclusion from having been pointed out things that it wouldn't otherwise occur to us to think about.

These eight leisures and opportunities, or 8 opportunities and 10 fortunes.

Again, the 8 lacking opportunities is what they're called, which means the eight things we lack, it's good that we don't have them. We have the opportunity of not having these eight. You got it?

What are the eight?

1. We have the goodness of not having wrong views

So we lack wrong view, and that's good. So here the wrong view means the wrong view would be denying karma. Well, but karma wasn't even in my vocabulary growing up. But, my parents always taught, What you do to others is going to come back to you. What you do to others is going to come back to you.

They weren't saying, Don't kill, don't steal, don't, right?

They were just saying, What you do to others is going to come back to you.

It's a common denominator in human societies. But there have been times when there were either some cultures, or times when that belief wasn't strong enough.

Without that belief that my behavior will have some ramification on something I will experience in the future, without that deep seated belief, then anytime, anything, or anybody disturbs you in any way, you would have no reason not to just destroy that thing.

So, I don't know, there was a time in our country they'd say in the Wild West that just everybody wore a gun and when something or somebody crossed you, you just shot them. I don't know if that's really true, but it's that kind of idea. If we don't understand that we reap what we sow on some level, then there's no morality whatsoever.

Can you say that deep down, even as a kid, you had some sense of right and wrong, good and bad. That means we lack having this wrong view.

Yes, we all have the wrong view of seeing things self consistently if you're a human like me. We're not talking about that lack. We just mean we have the opportunity of being a person who does have some deep belief that my behavior has an effect that's going to affect me in the future, somehow.

2. We lack having been born as an animal

The animal reality for the most part is constant self-protection. Eat or be eaten.

The level of intellect in an animal, even the highest ones, is still driven by instinct. They don't have this capacity to choose a different morality.

As humans, we have the ability to choose a different morality. Most of us need to be taught about it before we'll choose it. But we actually have the capacity to figure that a different morality, a higher morality would be beneficial, and choose to make changes. What it is to be an animal doesn't have that capacity. Even the Lassies in the Flippers of the world. Really, really amazing, good karma, brilliant animals can't figure out to do a different morale.

They can be taught seeing eye dogs, et cetera. They can be taught and that teaching helps their karmic seeds, helps them get out of an animal realm actually. Our pets have enough goodness that within their animal realm limitation, they have a life that's more like a pleasure being, relative to a human, a pleasure being. They're taken care of, they're kept safe, et cetera. But they're still stuck in this limited ability to choose their morality.

We could have been born an animal is the ramification of being told, You're so special because you're not an animal.

3. We lack having been born as a craving spirit

Craving spirits, most humans cannot see or hear, feel, sense craving spirit beings. Growing up in the United States, we didn't even believe in them. But there are other cultures that do believe in them whether you can see them or not.

We can logically think out the likelihood the of craving spirit reality. If we just think about how stinginess‘ mental imprints, if they were to ripen into a whole lifetime and an outer world reflecting stinginess, it would be a lifetime in which no matter what you do, you can't get your needs or wants met.

They described that realm, some of them as being, you're hungry and thirsty and you might even see food somewhere and you go rushing to get it, and then suddenly it's not food. It's something disgusting, and it's like, ugh.

We'll learn about the details of those later. It's a whole lifetime in a place where your needs and wants cannot get met. You cannot get them met so they just get stronger and stronger. You get hungrier and hungrier, but you don't die and it goes on for a long time.

In a lifetime like that, there's not enough safety and comfort to turn our minds to a spiritual path.

Having not been born as a craving spirit, we have this opportunity.

The implication is we could be, right next one, next life could be hungry ghost. Could have been in the past even, more than once. That was three.

4. We have the lack of having been born in a hell realm

Same idea with hell realms. We can't confirm them with direct perception yet. But hell realms are created by the karmic seeds of anger and violence. If you can imagine a whole world where you experience nothing but hatred and violence to such a huge extreme that we can hardly conceive of it, again, there's no room for turning our mind to a spiritual path in a realm such as that. So having not been born there last time around, we have this opportunity, number four.

5. We have the lack of no teachings

Meaning, we are human. We could have been born in a world where there is no Dharma, where are no teachers, no one who teaches, no one practicing.

In our world there is still Dharma being taught, teachers teaching, practitioners practicing.

We lack the no Dharma, no teachings.

6. We lack having been born in an uncivilized world

Uncivilized here is the word they use for being in a realm where no one's practicing a vowed morality. So morality is one thing. But vowed morality means that there are people who feel so drawn to their spiritual path that they want to commit themselves to their path. The way that they do that is by taking vows.

Christianity has vow takers. Not all of the versions, some do.

In the Buddhist tradition, we have the layperson vows, those five. We have beginner ordained vows, which you can take beginner ordained vows and just stay at that level for that whole life. There's 36 of those. Then there's fully ordained vows, which there are many more. There's Bodhisattva vows, Bodhisattva vows are a vowed morality. There's diamond wave vows later.

In a world where people take vows to declare themselves to themselves on their path makes our world civilized. That's what they mean by civilized here. There are people who take vowed morality and live according to it.

We are in a world where people still do that. So we have that lack as an opportunity.

7. We lack being in some way, so handicapped or disabled, either physically or mentally that we would be unable to learn this material, unable to practice it, unable to choose a different behavior and actually carry it out in some way.

8. We have the lack of having been born as a pleasure being

Again, pleasure beings is one of those realms that as humans, we don't see them. I didn't grow up hearing about pleasure realm beings and form and formless realm beings. All that was pretty new to me.

A pleasure realm being is a being whose goodness is ripening as a whole lifetime of exquisite beauty and pleasure. But the goodness that put them there was not a goodness that was steeped in wisdom. In that life as a pleasure being, they're enjoying themselves. Everybody there is enjoying themselves. There's no inclination at all to share that pleasure. If you and all your friends are all equally wealthy, do you make it a point to take them out to dinner? No, I don't know. I don't know how it works all being wealthy surrounded by wealthy friends, I don't really know. But there's less of a tendency to share when everybody's all blissed out. We just use up our pleasures without doing anything to perpetuate it, and we're going to use up our good seeds.

We haven't done any bad seeds, but we got there still with selfishness seeds left. They aren't ripening, they're not being purified. So when we use up all our good ones, what's going to happen? Oops. Right? They say fall.

So we don't aspire to pleasure realm being, either a worldly God or a form realm in this tradition, because it is like yas of pleasure, but it is a dead end on our spiritual path until it comes to an end. But then the tendency is, we fall into a lower, lower realm and we got to get out of that before we can get back to a human realm.

So thank goodness we're not pleasure beings.

In another sense, you could say, Well, if I were really, really wealthy and raised wealthy and I've always had everything done for me, and everything I want just shows up… Even as a human, it would be a little bit like not enough suffering to ever put me on my path necessarily, unless my seed's ripened that way.

But this is specifically meaning a pleasure realm, worldly God or form realm.

That was number eight.

Those were the eight things we don't have that are the eight opportunities that makes us special. Then we have 10 fortunes.

Oh, good time. Perfect time for a break. Let's take a break and we'll do the 10 fortunes.

(Break)

(60:58)

Those 8 things we don't have are our 8 opportunities. Got it?

It's just, I have to say it again and again because I get it inside out.

10 Fortunes

Now, there's the category called the 10 fortunes.

Five of these relate to oneself, and five of these relate to our outer world.

These are circumstances that we have.

We have 10.

1. We have the good fortune of having been born as a human

They tell us that a human life is the best circumstances for our spiritual progress. Because as a human, we have enough suffering to make us question and want to get out. But we have enough goodness that we can have our needs reasonably well met.

Because even as a human, if we were a human in a circumstance that we were so poor and uneducated, et cetera, that our day-to-day existence required total focus on finding food and shelter. It would be very difficult for it to occur to us: There must be something broken with this system. We'd be too involved in survival.

Human lives have the ability to even change that. But if we have a human life where we don't have that.

We have circumstances where we already are fairly comfortable, then we have this perfect opportunity to learn, and apply ourselves, and to learn to make different choices, and why to make choices and why to make the new choices we're going to make. We can learn about seeds, we can apply ourselves to it, because we have a certain amount of comfort. It's an amazing opportunity, isn't it?

2. We are born in a civilized land

Meaning in a land where people are keeping vowed morality.

Those who keep vowed morality represent for us people that are ahead of us on their spiritual path. Someone who's so dedicated to it that they have chosen to actually demonstrate their devotion to their path by taking their vows.

Most of our vows, you don't demonstrate them. You demonstrate them by your behavior.

Ordained vows, you put on some special clothing typically, so the general public recognizes you as someone devoted to your spiritual path.

For non ordained to see an ordained person is to help us understand that there are people who are trying. No judgment about what their path is or even how well they're doing it. Just the fact that it's possible still in our world for someone to take and follow a vowed morality inspires us. We have the goodness to then ask about vowed morality. Not necessarily ask them, but it means it's available to us.

That's what it is to be born in a civilized land.

Luisa: Sorry, one question. This applies also to other religions, like if I see in the Catholic church or in the, I don't know, other religions, people who have taken vows.

Lama Sarahni: Yes, yeah. Any vowed morality. Which technically marriage vows is a vowed morality. Okay.

3. We have the good fortune of having been born with our faculties intact

We can see, hear, smell, taste, touch, think. That's the main one—think.

4. We have the good fortune of having not committed one of the five heinous crimes

Five immediate misdeeds is another term. We'll learn more about these in future courses. But there are certain actions that when one sees themselves completing that action, that imprint made—karmic seed made—is so seriously negative that it will be the projecting karma at the end of this life, and it will ripen as the worst hell realm rebirth.

Those are five specific actions.

Killing one's father.
Killing one's mother.
Killing an Arhat. So someone who's reached nirvana.
Trying to harm Buddha with an evil intent. Meaning specifically Shakyamuni Buddha here, not just somebody who might be a Buddha, but specifically Shakyamuni Buddha.
Splitting up the Buddha Sangha.

Those last two we can't even do now, because Buddha is not here with us, and there isn't a Buddha‘s sangha here with us. We will learn later about the onion skin thing in those five. But those five deeds are so serious that we wouldn't have a human life right now. But it says we have the good fortune of not having done those. We kind of have to stop and go, do I really have the good fortune of not having done those?

Well, I know I haven't done those last two. Have I killed my father, my mother, an Arhat? Well, fortunately I haven't intentionally killed anybody.

So I think it's fair to say we have that good fortune.

5. We have the good fortune of having faith in the teachings

It doesn't mean that your faith is blind faith, and it doesn't necessarily mean this good fortune isn't a good fortune until you're all in.

Bur just to have the seeds to be studying at the level that we're studying. I mean twice a week for two hours plus your homeworks. I mean, we did that to get out of high school. We did that to get out of college. But this is for fun. You are special.

We're interested by them. We're inspired by them. To some extent. That's a fortune. That's a good thing.

6. We have the good fortune of living in a world where a Buddha has come Implying that there are worlds where enlightened beings have not shown up.

7. We have the good fortune of living in a world where a Buddha has taught

Also implying that maybe there could be worlds where Buddhas show up, but nobody is smart enough to ask them to teach. I don't know what they do then. Our Buddha taught.

8. We have the good fortune of living in a world where what the Buddha taught has not been lost from the hearts and minds of the people

Are you getting a sense of how tenuous or fragile some of these are?

The first one's, not so much, but then we get to these latter ones and it's like, whoa, I'm seeing it decline in my own world.

9. We are living in a world where what Buddha has taught is still being practiced

10. We are living in a world where there is support for practitioners

Remember in the olden days, the monasteries, and to some extent the nunneries were supported by the lay people. Because the lay people couldn't devote themselves to their spiritual life, but these people got to and did.

The spiritual life people didn't work for a living. They relied upon the supporters and then were obligated to the supporters to support the supporters with reading the scriptures, writing their letters. Because the ordained learned to read and write, and the ordinary people didn't. It was a mutually beneficial relationship under the ideal circumstances. Practitioners were being supported.

If we look at just my perception in my immediate world was that the Catholic nuns, I don't know monks much, but I had some nuns as patients. In their younger years as nuns, they lived and were supported by the church. Then they did their service work as well, but they didn't need to have a job.

Then, as in my 20 years of professional career, that support was being lost. By the end of my career, the nuns I took care of, they had to have jobs, because they didn't get support from the church anymore. Then I honored them even more because they didn't give up their spiritual life. They didn't give up their vows to go back to work. They did both.

Then in our Buddhist tradition, also, as Western people take ordained vows, they don't get to go live in a monastery and devote themselves to their prayers and practices. They carry on their western life and devote themselves to their prayer and practice. They don't have, in the west we're not supporting our sangha. I don't see it. And our sangha doesn't ask for support either. It's kind of hard to support them.

But do you see it is actually we're losing some of these opportunities.

The Buddha‘s teachings, the Sanskrit collection is incomplete.

The Tibetan and Chinese I think is complete still. The Tibetan, there are fewer and fewer people who can read it. So these 10 leisures, these 10 fortunes, it's like, oh, phew, we have them. But it's like they're not for keeps. That's the point. That's the Lama's point. Even if we weren't seeing a deterioration in the support and practice, and understanding of the teachings, that Lama would still say, Don't get yourself all puffed up because you've got these 18. You know why?

Because you could die tomorrow. Spend your time on:

Do I have those 8 lacks and 10 fortunes?

How strong are they in retrospect in my life?

Were they stronger before I even knew about them than they are now?

Then the Lama won't let us stay there. They'll take us to the next section of this first.

No, the first thing they teach us, Take the essence of your life.

How do I do it? Consider your leisures and fortunes.

Okay, great. I'm on a roll. I have everything I need. Now what?

You could lose it at any moment.

That comes in the second, the next verse.

Get the Most out of Life

(77:50)

Verse 3

The leisure and fortune,

I've found justice once

Is ever so hard to find an ever so valuable,

All that goodness, by lack and by having is our seeds ripening from some specific kinds of kindnesses we did before. There is no guarantee that we will get them again, or no guarantee when we will get them again. Because, as we live our ordinary human life, which is mostly about me, me, me and you, me and you, but me, needing to be safe, needing to be comfortable, needing to get it my way.

To some extent, our belief in a me that exists independent of other things needs to have me first in order to be safe, in order to survive. So, do we do enough not „me first“ deeds to color our mind into the goodness of another human life with such opportunity in a world where the Buddha come, where the teachings are still there, where people are practicing it, where there are teachers teaching it, where there's vowed morality and where we have all our faculties intact, and that we have the physical circumstances to devote ourselves to our spiritual practice?

So valuable.

Grant me then to wish that I can use it

To the best of my capacity night and day.

This first: I have everything I need now.

Suppose the teacher says, okay, go work on that. And you come back later going, yeah, yeah, I'm all over it. I've got everything I need. Teach me the path I'm here. Then the next thing they teach you is that death meditation.

Most of us did it before, recently. Remember the three and then the three and then the three more?

My death is certain. The time of my death is uncertain. And when I die, nothing but my spiritual practices helped me.

Why was that? That nothing but the Dharma helps me? Because the Dharma is what teaches me what kinds of things to do and not do that will put the seeds in my mind, any one of which I'd be happy for it to be the projecting karma at the end of this life.

Our elementary school teachers didn't teach us that.

Our college degrees didn't teach us that.

Maybe our parents tried to teach us that.

But we met spiritual teachers who did teach us about that, and that's the only thing that helps at the time of death.

Does it stop our death? No.

Does it change the experience? I'm going to say yes it could.

But it increases a lot. No, I don't want to say that. It shifts what comes next.

Does it guarantee no lesser rebirth? Not until we gain a certain level of living according to karma and emptiness. We can close the door to lesser rebirth before seeing emptiness directly. It happens as part of the realizations along the path of accumulation, actually.

But even then, complacency isn't useful at that time, because we still aren't guaranteed that we won't get a human life where we've got to scrape and fight for everything.

Or, we might even end up with a pleasure being form or formless realm. Which just is a delay. So yes, it's good to reach the lower realm doors being closed. But it doesn't mean, Okay, I can skate from here on out.

The verse says,

My body and the life in it

Are as fleeting as the bubbles in the sea froth of a wave.

It's like your teacher has said, Great, now you see how rare and special you are. And now see that this lifetime is as fleeting as a bubble and why.

Bless me first, thus to recall the death that will destroy me soon

And help me find sheer knowledge

That after I have died,

The things I've done, the white or black

And what these deeds will bring to me,

Follow always close behind as certain as my shadow.

Grant me then ever to be careful

To stop the slightest wrongs

Of the many wrongs we do

And try to carry out instead

Each and every good

Of the many that we may.

So within these, this is actually two verses of The Source of All My Good prayer.

He's talking about how the teacher will teach us about those three principles of death, and the three reasonings that we use to show it to ourselves.

Then the three conclusions that we draw from that to help us crank up our motivation to practice now instead of waiting till later.

But we might say, Yeah, but what determines what my next life will be?

So within this teaching on death awareness, the Lama will also teach us about karma, about the four laws of karma.

Karma meaning movement of the mind and what it motivates, that can be interpreted as the law of cause and effect, which when we first start studying it, that's what it means. And the Lama will teach us those four, they're called the four laws of karma.

It makes it sound like, oh, karma has to work this way because somebody said so.

When we understand deeply, we'll see that the process we call karma is explained by these four principles.

The 4 laws of karma

The four laws are the four ways that this imprints in and imprints out. It explains it.

It doesn't determine it, it explains it.

What are those four laws of karma?

We've studied them before, most of us, but pretend you haven't heard them.

Karma is definite

Which it makes it sound like watermelon seeds will bring watermelons. In our human world that's true. But „karma is definite“ really means a good seed, a kindness seed, mental imprint, it is definite that a kindness mental imprint will bring a pleasant result. It is definite that an unkindness seed planted will bring an unpleasant result. That's not actually saying watermelon seeds bring watermelons.

What it's actually saying is, if I can experience anything unpleasant, it can only be a result of some way in which I myself has done something similarly unpleasant to somebody else in the past, some past. For any pleasantness I can experience, I myself had to have to have somehow done something similarly pleasant to someone else.

Karma is definite.

Seeds grow

Then the second thing to understand about how seeds work, is that those seeds grow, the imprints grow.

They're increasing by way of similar seeds adding to them, and opposite seeds taking away from them. But as a general rule, they will grow bigger and bigger.

A tiny kindness can bring a great big pleasantness.

The opposite is true too.

A deed not done cannot bring a result

You don't plant a watermelon seed, don't expect a watermelon plant. Duh, we say.

But stuff happens to us all the time, that's like, I didn't create that. Wrong, right?

Or how come I can't find that perfect apartment? Don't have the seeds for it.

Now, technically, I don't find that that works so well, because you just don't have the seed for it ripening yet doesn't mean you don't have the seed.

But from the reverse, to think something can happen to us that we didn't create, is inconsistent with the third law.

A deed done must give a result

Not THE result, right? In English to say, This deed will bring that result, is what I mean by „A deed done must bring THE result“.

A deed done, it doesn't have a specified result until it ripens, and then we've got ‚a‘ result. THE result. But until then, it's definitely going to bring ‚a‘ result. We just don't quite know what it's going to be until it ripens.

With the caveat of unless we do some specific effort to damage that seed so that it can't grow big, strong enough to manifest into its ripening. So we can apply purification techniques to damage a seed so it ripens lesser, or we can damage a seed so much that it can't ripen at all. There's debate if we can damage it so much that it just disappears.

So why is teacher teaching us about the four laws of karma?

Because just before that, they said, You're going to die like any four minutes from now, you're going to be dead. Your body's not going to go with you. Your stuff is not going to go with you. Your identity is not going to go with you. Your personality is not going to go with you.

But what does go with you is all your karmic seeds made since beginning this time that included the ones from this life.

As long as we're not yet dead, we want to be in the business of making as much kindness‘ seeds as we can, so that we're starting to shift the numbers from selfish, selfish, selfish, selfish to, okay, I am trying, I try to be other-ish. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying.

Kindnesses is done without wisdom bring pleasures that wear out. Which they say, a pleasure that wears out is still included in being a suffering, because it wears out, leaves us wanting for more. But it's not inconsistent with our path to say, I just want to be more and more kind, even if it's going to bring me pleasantnesses to that wear out, because it's still better than just being more and more human that'll bring me more humanness that may or may not have as much pleasure as I have now.

If we've got a certain amount of pleasure in our lives, it's because of goodness, for the wrong reasons, it's still something to be happy about, and to make the effort to make more. Even when we're saying, yeah, but that's ultimately selfish. I just am being kind to get myself a better life. That's where we start, understanding that it's growing the kindness choice muscle that we'll then be able to use to do the same kindnesses, but under the influence of our understanding the real reason to be kind. Which is to be able to become one who can stop all the suffering in the world, not just own, Mahayana. We're thinking Mahayana, although at this level of the Lam Rim, we are not yet Mahayana. We'll talk about it, that there are certain realizations that we want to cultivate based upon being motivated by wanting to stop my own suffering.

I want to avoid those lower realms. Thank you very much.

I do want to reach the end of my suffering, my own suffering. Thank you very much.

If we say, no, no, I'm Bodhisattva, I don't care about my suffering.

We don't have the foundation that will keep us on the Bodhisattva path when enough yak poop hits the fan. We need the strength of the foundation that says, My own suffering is unacceptable. Because that gives us a much deeper ability to interact with others whose suffering is worse than mine, and with others whose suffering is less than mine and still have compassion for both levels.

They want us to have this heightened awareness that I could be dead tomorrow as I go through my day.

Then without understanding the ramifications of that upon our behavior, it would only leave us scared. Which is why they teach us about the laws of karma, the principles of karma. So that then we decide, Oh, I see how to use that information. Now I'm going to watch myself in my behavior, and see where I habitually interact with others in a way that when it comes back to me later—this life or others, most likely others—it will be unpleasant and I don't want that. So I'm going to choose some other behavior.

Hopefully we're bright enough to say, So what things should I avoid? What things should I try to do?

We can figure it out on our own. Or we can ask them, Please help me understand what wrongs of the many wrongs we do? What goods of the many that we may?

We'll talk about it.

This level, we are studying the level of the beginning capacity spiritual practitioner.

They call it lesser capacity. We tend to hear lesser, greater, and we think I'm better because I'm a greater capacity. It doesn't mean that. It means beginner beginner capacity, and we can't really be a greater practitioner until we've done the beginner and made it strong. I just said.

It‘s called the Hinayana, but that term kind of has a derogatory sense to it in modern ways. I don't know about that, but I'm told.

But it's just beginner capacity, is to work out the details of this principles of death, death awareness, and then the principles of karma to the point where we are motivated enough to be willing to look for our own unkindness behaviors, and to decide: I'm going to try to turn those around, change those.

(100:05)

We have a little bit of time. It's not in the teaching notes, it's not on your homework, but we know about the wrongs, the many wrongs we do that we're stating here.

Help me to be so careful to stop those wrongs of the many wrongs we do

And try to carry out instead, each and every good of the many that we may.

The guidelines they give us are those 10, the 10 non virtues that they don't flop around and say, Just do the 10 virtues. They say, Look, avoid these 10 non virtues.

We don't take them as vowed morality actually until later. Because they're almost impossible to completely avoid these 10. But they're such great guidelines and there's so many different levels we can be working on with them, that they're a really useful tools.

We know them.

There's three of body, four of speech, and three of mind.

The many wrongs of body that we do is killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct.

I hope every one of our minds are going, Nah, I don't do those.

Then we just look more deeply, more subtly like the onion skin thing. Right, we're not. But there are levels where we might be closer.

No judgment, just saying, at what level in our lives do we still contribute to things being killed?

Your Lama is not going to say, You have to become vegetarian. You have to stop buying leather goods. You have to... It is totally left up to us.

There may be circumstances where something has to get killed for some high purpose. I don't know. We can't avoid breathing without contributing to the end of life of something. So don't make yourself nuts. But we find where we're comfortable, and then we push the bar a little bit higher. How can I work on my not killing a little bit more than I have been before?

My white fly problem is gone because it's winter. But it's like, what am I going to do in the spring when they come back? I sacrificed one plant. It hasn't worked so far.

The speech, four of speech, I'll avoid lying, harsh speech, divisive speech, useless speech.

Three of mind. These are harder to say. I will avoid being unhappy when somebody else gets some happiness. I will avoid being happy when somebody else gets something bad, and I will avoid those wrong views of not believing in „I reap what I sow“, not believing in past and future lives, and probably the not believing in fully enlightened beings. Not believing that there are whatever that is.

Perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom can in fact exist.

Then to avoid those is one thing. Avoid the wrongs. But to do every good end of many that we may flip those around. I will avoid killing. But I will practice protecting life. There are so many more ways we can be aware of how we protect life.

Do you wear your seatbelt every single time? That's protecting life?

Do you stop behind the limit line at the stop sign? Or do you Nah…through it?

Way to protect life.

Do you give blood from time to time if you qualify?

There are so many ways that we can contribute to protecting life beyond buying the goldfish and letting them off, out in the lake.

Then killing, stealing, protecting others' property.

Do you take as good a care as your friend's car that you borrow as your own?

Do you avoid driving through the pothole with their car, the way you avoid driving through the pothole with your car? Okay, yeah, my friends. But what about the rental car? Do you take as good a care of the rental car as you do your own car?

These are these just little nuances of how we can use these 10: protecting life, protecting others' property, protecting others' relationships. Pretend the other's partner and your partner is there with you anytime you're with anybody else. Really with anybody else. To be aware of the nuances of our interactions with others.

Lying, truthful speech.

There's a silly movie called „The Invention of Lying“. It's worth watching actually. It's not what you think. It's very quirky, but it's a way to think this. It's like what really is the opposite of lying? What really is it to speak the truth? Do you say to your friend, Oh man, that color yellow is terrible on you. I hope not.

Truth, lying, harsh speech.

Can we speak sweetly, kindly, gently, nicely, even when we need to correct somebody?

Divisive speech. Can we speak to bring people together? That would mean praising others to others, wouldn't it? Speaking of the good qualities of my friend Anne, to our mutual friend, Martha, would be the opposite of divisive speech. Singing others praises.

Useless speech. I don't know. A lot of us would not say much avoided use if we only spoke purposefully. But then really, it's the intention behind our speech that makes us purposeful or useless, not what we are actually saying.

Jealousy, ill will, wrong view. What's the opposite of jelly? Jealousy. Opposite of jelly is peanut butter. Jealousy is to be happy when people get good stuff, right?

The opposite of ill will, caring about somebody who's having trouble enough to want to help them. Caring, whether you like them or not.

Then the opposite of wrong view is, I believe in karma and emptiness. I believe I can become a fully enlightened being so that I can help that other in that deep end ultimate way. I'm going to decide I believe that, whether I quite do or not, I kept working on it, but I'm going to live like I do. Because that is what makes all the rest of this meaningful. Otherwise there's no reason to do so.

Luisa: On this point of the wrong view, how to plant seeds to have, let me think the word…internalize the future lives. Like to have this plan you mentioned last class, also ongoingness of our mind. That intellectually you can explain it, I can understand it, I can make sense of it, but still I don't have a plan for my next life. Or I am still thinking of my next two years or five years. So how to break that and plan seed for expanding this vision of me. Mindstream.

Lama Sarahni: Right. So you're wanting to be able to gain a deeper realization of something that you don't quite understand. So you would want to see yourself helping somebody understand something better that they don't quite understand. It doesn't have to do anything with past, future lives. It's just somebody doesn't quite understand something, and in order for you to better understand that, you say, Okay, let me help you understand this better, and try. It could be within your work, it can be with your daughter, it could be… And you just dedicate those seeds to my improved realizations of this ongoing nature Me.

Luisa: Thank you.

Tom: I was just having a discussion about the 10 virtues today, and something that I struggle with, I'm finding myself in a space sometimes of analyzing a situation that I'm in. I'm being observant to the other person, and in my mind, I'm starting to analyze it, but then I feel like I'm being judgmental. I don't express it to the other side, but in my mind I feel bad and uncomfortable. But how it can also be something that I do. I'll create a yoga class and I'm analyzing what I've done today, but I don't want to be judging. But there is to learn. So how do I…

I mean, we even have analytical meditation technically, so I'm analyzing,

Lama Sarahni: Right. The thing when we are analyzing what the other person is doing, our judgment kicks in. Oh, that's good, that's bad. That's one of these 10 wrong deeds, et cetera. And our natural, our ignorant process says that's in them, from them. And so our judgment comes up.

But the process that we're trying to use is to be, I'm seeing this, I'm becoming aware of their behavior in that way as showing me my own past behavior that's making me see this in them. And that will, it serves as an educational tool for me to say, Okay, my habitual reaction to them would be this, but now I understand better why I'm seeing them do that.

And from that I understand better how to respond differently to them.

The judgment will come up and then we turn it and say, No, no. This is just showing me something from my past. Technically, you can take it one step further and think, Well, by my seeing them do that or say that, I've actually burnt off that past behavior, my past behavior of that. So, phew, done. Thank you. And now I'm going to respond in this different way. And that too allows your perception of them to change, because it's like, okay, they just gave me this opportunity to burn off this negative seed. I have less of it in me, so I'm less likely to see it in them in the future. As opposed to old worldview is, they behave like that. They're always going to behave like that. I'm going to expect that kind of behavior from them. So I don't like them as much as I did before. That's where the judgment will take us.

It's going to come up. Don't beat yourself up for having judgment, because it's in our seeds to do that. But you catch it and go, okay, great. I'm going to use this in this way instead.

Tom: I mean, I will say I recognize it and it did kick to be like, oh, I can learn from this. And then I felt happy. But I did dwell for 24 hours about me feeling bad and comparing myself in a negative way to the other person.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. So that's a whole nother set of seeds, that habit. So that's a little different direction that you work with those seeds.

Tom: Thank you.

Lama Sarahni: Judging others happens. We can't just decide. I'm going to stop it because it's bad. But we can weed it out and not replant it. And that just takes the effort to the drenpa. 24 hours later it‘s like, Oh, I've been judging all that time. Right? Pull it back.

[Usual closing]

Class 10: Steps for Those of Medium and Greater Capacity

4 February 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Class 10

Welcome back. We are ACI course 3, class 10.

I have a little black gnat that's buzzing around and I know when I inhale to start another sentence, it's going to commit suicide. So I want to try to avoid that. Sorry recording. Welcome back. We are ACI 3 class 10, February 4th, 2024.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Usual opening]

All right, I would like to assign the review questions at the beginning of class. We're all here. I'm going to pause the recording. Help me remember to unpause it after.

Lower Capacity

We started looking at the prayer called The Source of All My Good as an outline of our meditation career.

We learned that the first step in our spiritual career is taking a teacher, finding and taking a teacher, and then the teachings teach how to take a Lama.

Then the second part is how to practice once we have taken a teacher.

(Some discussion about technical issues with translation channel)

There were two parts in how to practice.

The first is the Lama urges us to take the meaning of our life.

Get the essence of your life.

The second part is learning how to do that.

Then, there was a question that I don't remember giving you the answer to. Which was: What are the three parts of taking the essence of your life?

That's referring to the different capacity. So the steps shared with persons of lesser capacity, the steps shared with persons of medium capacity and then the steps of the greater capacity.

Whether we are motivated by the higher capacity or not, we start our career from the steps of the person of lesser capacity, because we need that foundation.

That step shared with the person of lesser capacity, meaning the beginner, the Lama points out how fortunate we are to have this particular life.

The prayer says, „Just this once you have this life“ to help us take it seriously.

We learned about the eight opportunities by way of 8 things we don't have.

And we learned the 10 fortunes, which are 10 circumstances that we do have.

We could go, Wow, okay, great, I'm special.

If the Lama sees we're just getting puffed up, then they will make it a point to show us that in fact, we don't know how long those great qualities are going to last.

So the next Lam, the next step of the path is to get really familiar with those three principles of a death awareness practice:

My death is certain.
The time of my death is uncertain.
When I die, only my Dharma practice will help me

As the motivating factor to commit ourselves to our Dharma practice life.

But it sounds like the teacher is just taking over control. It's like, yeah, now that you're my student, you have to do this, you have to do that. That's not the meaning at all. The meaning of „When I die nothing but the Dharma can help me“—we have learned and will learn that the way the Dharma is the only thing that can help me is because it's the teachings through which I can come to make wiser choices of my behavior, such that I can influence my future lives by way of what I do in this life.

To have some level of concern about my future life is in fact what makes us Buddhist.

If we used our karma and emptiness understanding focused on making my this life better, then we're not using those tools for our spiritual path.

It can work if we have the seeds to be able to make those changes powerfully enough to see changes in our this life circumstances. But our concern as an educated Buddhist is what happens the moment after the end of this life.

Now this understanding of how rare and precious this life is becomes a little more clear, more important. Because as we understand what the Dharma is teaching us, we understand better how difficult it is to be assured that the behaviors that we've done have been sufficient to close the doors to a lesser rebirth.

If we were to really know that and our own death was coming near, the experience would be very different than if we can't really be sure.

Our Dharma practice helps by way of teaching us the principles of karma amongst other things.

So the next thing that the Lama will do when we ask, Well, why is it that nothing but the Dharma can help?, they will teach us about those principles of karma.

The four laws of karma.

Karma is definite.

Remember what definite means:

A virtue is definitely going to bring us a pleasant result.

A non virtue is definitely going to bring us an unpleasant result.

Which means we don't really know what's virtue and non-virtuous until we get the result.

Again, we need to ask, okay, I get the idea. But if I can't know, if I can't see those relationships, then I need some guidelines for what qualifies as virtue and non virtue. First principle.

Karma grows

The result that we get is always bigger than the deed we did that made its cause, the seed planted.

We can't get a result if we've not done the deed
A deed done must give a result unless it's fully purified, adequately purified

So we get taught karma because we've asked, What do you mean nothing but the Dharma helps me at death? Oh, learning about karma, I've spent my whole life trying to avoid planting seeds that could cause me a worser life in the future. And I've tried to plant seeds that will bring me a better life in the future.

My concern is for my future lives.

Not that there's no concern for this life, of course. But our focus is what's coming next at the lesser capacity of practice.

Luisa, you had your hand up a long time ago. Did I get it?

Luisa: You just answered with that, because I was thinking why as a Buddhist, I have to think in this next life, if we are supposed to think with Diamond Way we can get enlightened in this life?

Lama Sarahni: Right. Because we need the foundation, the strong foundation of understanding past, present, future lives. Without that, we can't get enlightened in this lifetime.

A lesser capacity person is one who practices their teachings, studies and practices in order to avoid one of the three suffering realms in next life. Hell realm, hungry ghost, animal.

They focus on learning how to live as harmlessly as possible, because doing harm to others of body, speech, mind, is what plants the seeds that if any of one of those ripens as the projecting karma at the end of this life, will ripen into a me hell realm being, or me hungry ghost realm being, or me animal realm being.

So to even gain the level of practice of a lesser capacity person, we actually need to have some working understanding of at least the possibility of our own selves ending up in a lower realm.

We have a tendency to hear it and go, Yeah, yeah. But maybe we're not convinced. Maybe we're not convinced enough to have this incredible aversion to killing somebody. I say it like that, and of course we have aversion to killing somebody. But go back to me and my whitefly problem. I don't have the same aversion to accidentally killing that whitefly that I don't want on my plant to begin with, as I do of thinking I might accidentally kill somebody with my car.

Those are two very different things. They are different qualities of karma. But the point is, there is deep down inside some level of belief that, No, just killing a whitefly, come on. That's not so bad. That's not bad enough to make me afraid of going to a lower realm at the end of this life.

So it's kind of starting our career with a big downer, because very early on they want us to recognize we're going to die at any minute. And that if we have the slightest negativity in our mind, then the likelihood of becoming a hell realm being is just huge. And it's like, who's going to be attracted to that? Okay, thank you very much. I don't want anything to do with that religion.

But, when we understand the principles, and the logic, they're doing us this service to point out that all this stuff that we rejected as sophisticated modern humans, it's like that's a big mistake. We don't prove it in this class, and we don't really prove it in other classes. We just hear it again and again, and we learn the tools about karma and emptiness to come to our own proof. Not an intellectual proof, but a, Oh my gosh, I really see how that could happen. And when we get that, that's what they mean by the realization. It becomes real for us that I'm in danger of hell realm rebirth. When that becomes real, then it's like, Oh my gosh, if I can do something about that, I am going to.

That's when we start actually making progress on our path.

Yes, these teachings about the lower realms are to motivate us on our practice, in our practice. But it's not that they're made up in order to motivate us. They're pointing out things we don't probably want to have pointed out to us.

Then they say, work it out yourself. Don't just take it because the teacher said so. Work it out yourself. We don't quite have enough information to work it out ourselves yet. But we're putting the jigsaw puzzle pieces all out on the table, and soon we're going to start putting it together.

Lesser capacity practitioner is motivated day by day in a way where they're choosing their behaviors such that they are trying to assure themselves of a human rebirth or better. Now, we don't want better than human, we want human. But they just say a human life or better. We're living now with that emphasis.

It becomes strong as we are living moment by moment with this keen awareness that any four minutes from now I could be dead. And we're choosing our behavior accordingly.

Lesser capacity person. It's not lesser at all, is it?

That's a powerful strong practitioner, to have that kind of awareness of how what I'm doing be hurting somebody. How might what I'm saying be hurting somebody? How might what I'm thinking be hurting somebody? That's harder. Then answer the question and behave accordingly.

Yes, Luisa

Luisa: Lama, sorry, one question about that, with the realization of death. I could go to a lower realm. I had experience that somehow, I guess it's arrogance, since I intellectually understand many things. Then I think I am safe, because sometimes I have heard Geshela said, When you understand the pen at some level, then you don't fall in the lower realms. And I don‘t know how to get out of that. I somehow feel I understand it pretty well, so I am safe.

Lama Sarahni: Right. You take that into your meditation and say, Am I really safe?

What would make me safe? What would prove to me that I'm safe?

I would absolutely refuse to hurt somebody for my own benefit.

We know, yeah, intellectually, but…

Medium Capacity

(29:10)

Now we get to the medium capacity person's practice.

Suppose we go to the Lama and go, Oh man, I get it. I am in trouble, but I'm working really hard to close those doors to the lesser rebirth. But now I see that's not enough to stop my own suffering. That can't be enough.

If we think it's enough, the Lama's job is to push us to medium capacity.

If we're not asking ourselves, Lama will push.

If we are asking, they take us to the next level.

The next level is the study and practices through which we develop the wish to achieve freedom.

It's one thing to close the door to lesser rebirth. It's another thing to stop all of our own suffering.

Buddha's teachings, that's the promise: Everything is suffering. All that suffering has causes. You stop the causes, the suffering stops. And there's a path to stopping that suffering.

In the early teachings, Buddha is not saying, And to do that, you have to do it for everybody. Because you don't. To reach the end of your own suffering, you don't need to be motivated to do it for everybody.

We need the motivation of closing the door to lesser rebirth.

Then we need the motivation of, I'm sick of my own suffering. And Buddha, you've taught that there's a way to stop it. So teacher teach me. I'm ready to do what I have to do to stop my suffering to reach Nirvana. Nirvana being the goal at this level practitioner.

Medium level practitioner has already gained this understanding of the preciousness of their human life and its inevitable loss. They've learned and been working with the behavior changes to prevent a next lower rebirth.

Now they're wanting to develop this mind of behavior choice making through which they will stop the perpetuation of Sansara altogether for themselves.

So really, they're not motivated to get a better next life. They're motivated to get Nirvana.

It would make a nice debate to say, well, is Nirvana a next life or is it somehow different than a next life? And what do we mean by next life?

It would go on for a while.

Medium capacity practitioner has come to recognize that the very nature of any kind of happiness in the desire realm, in a sansaric world, is that it just leaves us wanting for more. Everybody understands obvious suffering is obvious suffering. We don't need convincing.

But to say, Well, but something that makes me happy, Buddha is saying that's a suffering also. How can you be happy and suffer at the same time?

It's the misunderstanding of where that happiness comes from that made the situation that's ripening as happiness. That makes the happiness such that it will wear out. When happiness wears out, pleasure wears out.

When we don't understand where it comes from, we very naturally, effortlessly want for more.

If the chocolate cake is giving me the pleasure, then when the chocolate cake is done, the pleasure goes away.

That means that the pleasure of the chocolate cake, even while I was enjoying it, was a suffering because it's ending, it's going to end.

That leaves us thinking, well then I shouldn't care about any pleasure whatsoever.

I'll just be a stoic nun living in a cave. And the worse the circumstances are, the better.

No, that's not what Buddha taught either. In fact, even taught don't do that.

Your retreat cabin should be comfortable. We heard it before.

The conclusion is not, well then happiness is not worth it.

The conclusion is, Why am I making it in such a way that it's not sustainable?

Why does my happiness depend upon chocolate cake?

Why can't the happiness just be happy, happy, happy?

Then it wouldn't matter: Chocolate cake, oatmeal, mud pie. Wouldn‘t matter? Would it?

If we understand where the happiness actually comes from, which is trying to share a little happiness with somebody else, it wouldn't matter in the slightest what was coming to us. What would matter would be, What do I have that I can share with someone else that would try to bring them a little bit happiness?

Can I bring anybody any happiness in fact?

No, not without their seeds ripening. Oh, thank you.

That takes us to a tangent. How many times when somebody offers us something, we go, Oh, no thank you. Or we go, great.

What seeds are we planting when we're not getting a little pleasure?

Well, what if they offer you dog poop? Are you supposed to fake that that's so pleasurable? Well, no, because they thought of you enough to offer you something. Maybe they thought dog poop was really, really fabulous. Maybe it's your little three-year-old and they're offering mom dog poop.

Like, wow, mom, look at this cake I made for you. Mom's going to be happy.

It doesn't matter that it's dog poop.

So we're not faking it. We're genuinely happy that the three-year-old had such a sweet little imagination.

The misunderstanding of where happiness comes from is what keeps us trapped in the mentally afflicted happiness that makes happiness a suffering. The Lama teaches us, and then encourages us to cook it, cogitate on it, meditate on it, until we can crack this nut of, Even pleasure is suffering, yet I'm driven by wanting pleasure. How do we wrap our mind around that conundrum?

This is where the beginning teachings on emptiness need to come in so that we can start to grow this understanding of how the objects and other people in our world that we are expecting to be the source of our happiness cannot be the source of our happiness.

It doesn't take growing all the way into highest middle way to get the glimpses into how emptiness and karma are married together, that allow us to work with our reactions to our circumstances in such a way to help us start to overcome the habit of perpetuating the ignorance, that perpetuates all that suffering.

To reach the end of that ignorance is what it is to get free of our mental afflictions.

To reach the beginning of the end of our ignorance requires experiencing emptiness directly, ultimate reality directly.

That experience is going to be a result of causes.

It's such a powerful goodness that the causes planted need to also be powerful goodnesses, but smaller. Because they're going to grow into that big one.

The way we plant those little seeds that can grow into the result direct perception of emptiness, is by growing our virtue, keeping our morality.

Because keeping our morality means avoiding, harming very intentionally.

Avoiding harming, gathering goodness, and later on we'll add to that.

But this growing mindfulness of avoiding harming increases the power of our moral living, our ethical living.

As our ethical living adds to the powerful goodness seeds in our minds, our meditative concentration will go deeper.

What blocks our meditative concentration from going deeply are the negativities of our selfish and ignorance seeds in our minds.

As we are cleaning those out and intentionally behaving more and more gross and subtly harmless, our meditations will go deeper.

When our meditations go deeper, we get finer and finer conceptual understandings of that empty and dependent originated nature of the three spheres of our experiences.

Which means that when we are in those experiences, we can more swiftly, easily choose the wiser behavior, which leads to deeper meditative concentration, which leads to deeper emptiness, dependent origination. You get the connection.

So that we're working towards cultivating the experience through which we can finally stop perpetuating the mental afflictions.

Now, we're already working on changing those mental affliction behaviors, because that's what it means to be living more morally.

We're avoiding killing, stealing sexual misconduct in more and more subtle ways. We're avoiding lying, harsh speech, divisive speech, idle speech, in more and more subtle ways.

Our life experiences that are triggering our mental afflictions give us the place where we apply our wiser choices of behavior.

If we go through life and we're never challenged with a situation that brings up anger, it doesn't necessarily mean we have no anger seeds. How are we going to weed them out if we don't have a chance for them to come up and we not act in the same old way from them?

Same with jealousy, same with pride, same with stinginess, same with fear, same with liking, craving, wanting, never satisfied.

(45:10 Internet connection got lost, few minutes to get back to class)

(47:43 back to class)

Where was I?

Waxing eloquent about medium capacity practitioner whose focus of practice is reaching Nirvana, and what they have to learn to be able to do that is how does seeing emptiness directly and what that means to them at that level.

Although the emptiness they perceive will be identical to a Mahayana emptiness, the effect that it will have on them will be different, because it was not imbued yet with a mind that wants to free all beings.

A medium capacity person is motivated to stop all of their mental afflictions forever. To do that, they focus on the teachings about how things and how that affects our choice of behavior from the wheel of life.

They particularly focus on the teachings of the wheel of life to help them learn how to stop the cycle of suffering.

In the verse, which I don't have in front of me, it's the one that says,

Bless me to perceive all that's wrong with the good things of this life.

I cannot get enough of them.

They cannot be trusted.

They're the door to every pain I have.

Bless me then to strive instead

For the happiness of freedom.

Freedom meaning Nirvana, freedom from Sansara.

Who enjoys something is a result of a kindness. To be adverse to something—can you say disenjoy something?—is a result of some kind of unkindness.

There isn't any other way that we can experience pleasures or pains than by way of what ripens as a result of our own similar behavior, only smaller. Because those seeds grow.

There isn't a pleasure that we can experience that we didn't create.

There isn't a displeasure that we can experience that we didn't create.

Any experience we have been aware of ourselves thinking, saying, doing towards another will bring us a result.

If behaviors plant seeds 65 inn 65 out, but those seeds are growing between when they're in and when they're out, it means we will never run out of seeds, will we? That's one of the proofs of past and future lives. Because we'll never run out of seeds. That's a little scary and it's motivating as well.

Is the conclusion, Oh, a medium level practitioner avoids all pleasure, because all they want to do is burn off their distress, their pains, and they know that pleasures are going to wear out, so what's the use? No, they don't. They're very aware, or becoming more and more aware, that any pleasure that does come from them, come to them, they created it. That means they can create more.

They don't create more by going to grasp more of the thing that seem to have created the pleasure. They are understanding that pleasure comes as a result of avoiding harming others. They will then share, really without being told, Share what you want to come. We can figure that out ourselves.

The teacher will help us figure that out, if we're not getting it ourselves. That's their job.

The first step in medium capacity person is developing this wish to achieve freedom. Then the second step is figure out how to actually do it.

So we'll hear first of all how to actually do it.

Then we have to figure out, Well, how do I apply those understandings into my life? Where are my challenges? Where are my eases, things that come to me so easily that I take the pleasure for granted? Where are my challenges where those mental afflictions arise so quickly that I've reacted to them before I even realized I was having one?

That's the practice at medium capacity level.

The verse is the one that says,

Grant that these pure thoughts will lead me to be watchful

And recall what I should be doing.

I can't get the rest of it. But it's growing our mindfulness on our behavior, on our practice choices.

If our mindfulness has been growing on our meditation cushion, our mindfulness can be growing outside.

Thanks Lian-Sang. Everybody can see that. (Lian-Sang had copied the verse in the chat)

Our ability to apply our mindfulness to our ethical behavior grows off our cushion. Then that helps us grow our concentration on our cushion in which our drenpa and our sheshin is getting stronger. Then our drenpa and sheshin off the cushion is getting stronger too.

The prayer says,

Bless me then to take the vows of morality of the essence of my practice.

Those 10 wrong deeds and their opposites are not things that we vow to do until way later. But based on understanding the power of seed planting and the power of purification, at some point we recognize the power of taking a vow to avoid certain behavior. Then we want to devote ourselves to keeping that vowed morality.

They are talking about taking the Pratimoksha vows, whether they are the five lifetime layperson vows, or any level of the ordained vows, if someone were so inclined. And the one day vows, which at this level would be the Hinayana, the lesser, not lesser capacity, but the non Mahayana one day vows. The vows are the same, but the motivation with which we do our one day vow practice is different.

We might still have those one day vows that we use from time to time as part of our practice at the medium level capacity.

There's a question on your homework.

How come in the prayer, it only mentions the morality in terms of a medium scope practitioner?

The commentary, the answer key says: By mentioning morality, you are implying the other two. The other two means the other two of the three baskets: morality, concentration, and wisdom.

Anytime morality is mentioned we're learning that the reason we even mention morality is because of this connection between our morality, our ability to concentrate, and so our ability to understand what's meant by wisdom, deeper and deeper and deeper. They're wanting to trigger in our mind, anytime we think morality, let those three dominoes fall. Morality, concentration, wisdom.

Deeper wisdom means more pure morality, means deeper concentration, which means higher wisdom. The concentration and wisdom are implied in that verse, even though they're not mentioned.

So far, our Lam Rim practice would be:

I'm sick of suffering. I want to stop it.

I need to find a teacher who seems to already know something more than me at least. I know the qualities of the teacher I want to look for.

Okay, I've found one. Now what?

They'll urge me to get the essence of my life.

What are those qualities of my precious human life? The 8 and the 10.

How do I actually take the essence?

Well, first I need to become really, really clear that I'm going to die and I don't know when.

When I do, all that goes on is my pool of karma. All that can help me at my death is the Dharma.

Why is that? Because the Dharma helps me understand karma.

What are those four laws of karma?

Think them through.

Okay, well while I'm studying and while I am meditating, I'm still going towards my death. I'm still getting older, losing strength. Isn't there a way to stop all of that too?

If I can close the door to lesser rebirth, can I close the door on suffering altogether? And do I really want to get free of those ups and downs?

When we decide yes, then how am I going to do that?

We'll have learned: I need to train myself in morality. Like how to use my understanding of karma strongly enough to make the future circumstances of nothing but pleasantness. Do we even believe that's possible? Nothing but pleasantness.

If we don't believe it's possible, then we're not going to make the behavior changes that we need to make.

It does take time to cook this stuff from an intellectual to a, Oh yeah, I'm getting it. Because with that getting it will also come this realization that it really is stoppable. You yourself will be able to stop it. But we have to really believe that before we can make our behavior changes strong enough.

Okay, I think my internet's back on, so I'm going to start this up on my computer. (62:58 short break)

(64:35 back to class)

I think all of a sudden I was bilingual. Those are great seeds for about three words.

Once upon a time I memorized the Heart Sutra in Spanish, because I had a group of Spanish speakers who had supported us in three-year retreat, and I wanted to go and I wanted to offer that to them. And I did, and then I promptly forgot the whole thing. Such a bummer. That's how awful my language seeds are. But I'm rejoicing that I did it. They said they could understand it. Which was, I did it in Chinese too once. I was teaching in Singapore, the Heart Sutra, and I said, let me offer you in Chinese. They were so polite. They were going (imitating smiling and nodding face) through the whole thing. Then at the end I said, So did you understand any of that? And they go (shaking her head).

I just love telling that story on me. I thought I was so cool, and it was terrible.

(66:19)

Where are we?

We were running through how we would use this, our Lam Rim as our sequence.

I'm training myself in morality. Yes, yes, I got there.

Then, I need to train myself in more and more careful moral choices in my everyday life. How can I do that if I'm on such automatic pilot?

Well, the way we do it is we train ourselves in that drenpa and sheshin—recollection, the ability to hold our mind on the meditation object. But here it's the ability to hold our mind on our level of morality in our behavior at the grocery store, in traffic, at the office, at home.

We all have a certain base level of morality that we grew up with probably.

But now we're being asked to really fine tune that.

Are we willing to snap at our husband because we're in a bad mood? We know that they'll forgive us because they love us. So we can get away with stuff with somebody who loves us, and they do the same back and then it's fine because I love them and that's what it's like.

But even that level of letting our hair down is planting seeds that we really don't want. So, our recollection off cushion is on our morality, ethical mindfulness.

Then our sheshin is the state of mind that's checking in until we have the tight hold on our morality, and our sheshin level watching all the time.

Then it's pretty hard to fall off into old worldview morality, because you've got these two states of mind so well-trained. Like, I don't know, being able to ride the horse bear back without holding onto the reigns. You're so familiar, you're so confident. You are so in tune with the horse. To have that kind of drenpa and sheshin with our own mind, our own personality.

We can say, Okay, I'm going to work on this behavior, and actually do it. It's not something that we just decide: I'm going to be like that. I mean, most of us can't do that. It takes training and effort and helping others. Avoiding disturbing the minds of others. Showing by example how moral discipline does in fact increase happiness eventually anyway.

We choose our morality carefully, which means we train ourselves to monitor our behavior even for behavior that are completely acceptable in society.

It's like we're expected to get angry back at the boss. If we don't, all our colleagues are going to think we're pushovers, or there's something wrong with us, or you can't possibly be a strong enough person to be on my team if you won't even stand up to the nasty boss. We're expected to behave like that.

Jealousy is expected to have some kind of weird, unpleasant behavior. If we don't do it, there's something wrong. But when we have this standard with this higher goal, then it doesn't matter what everybody else says is fine behavior, even expected behavior. It's like, no, no, not for this one.

We work first on the 10 non virtues. We've already covered that.

We train so that our natural reactions to unpleasant situations will no longer be negative, no longer be the kinds of behaviors that will plant seeds for more unpleasant situations.

The unpleasant situations will still occur for some period of time. But when we refuse to react with unpleasantness, they're being burnt off, and we're planting powerful good seeds.

It is one thing to plant a kindness seed in the face of everything pleasant.

It's another to plant a kindness seed in the face of everything is screaming, Yell back, and you don't.

That training happens by repeated, repeated, repeated, goof up, get back on the horse, fall off, get back on the horse, ride for a little while. Things are getting pretty good. Push the envelope, right? Take your horse over jumps. Still react with kindness.

Nobody's going to make us do that, but ourselves.

The teacher is there and available to help. But they're not the one saying, Work harder, work harder, work harder. They will, if you ask them. But it's our responsibility, isn't it? Okay.

Medium scope practitioner in training themselves are becoming more kind.

They are becoming more compassionate.

But they still don't have this focus on reaching their own Buddhahood.

They're focused on reaching their Nirvana, as if that's the highest achievable goal. And there are traditions that believe that's the highest.

(74:10 broken connection)

Greater Capacity

Suppose we are full on middle capacity practitioners, and we're really marching along in our practice. We go to see our teacher again.

At some point, if it doesn't occur to us ourselves, the teacher's going to say, So you're getting really close to the end of all your mental afflictions, huh?

We're going, Yeah, yeah, life's really good. I'm on this.

And they'll say, Yeah, but what about everybody else?

Are you going to, you're going to reach your Nirvana, what about everybody else?

I don't put yourself in the place of being this progressing on your spiritual path towards the end of your own suffering, and it hasn't occurred to you yet that, oh my gosh, everybody could be doing this same thing. Or at least every human could be doing the same thing?

Then our teacher says, Hello, what about everybody else?

Are we going to be shocked? Are we going to be offended? Are we going to go, Really? Really it's possible to help everybody stop suffering?

If we've already seen that the system works to a certain extent, and then we hear them suggest, Look, by the power of your seeds, you could experience yourselves standing on a billion planets being what everybody needs to reach their own happiness. That not only could be you. Technically, inevitably, it will be you.

If we didn't have the seeds, we'd hear that said and we'd go, No way.

If we did have the seeds, we would just melt. Like, Oh wow, that's the coolest thing.

We're in a higher practitioner level of teaching. We're in Mahayana teachings from the get-go.

We were attracted to those teachings by our own seeds or we wouldn't be here. Even just at ACI course three, we wouldn't still be here. So we have the seeds for someone to have taught us the pen thing, and we like, Oh wow.

Then taught us a little bit more about our own behavior and it's like, Oh wow.

And taught us about the ramification of experiencing ultimate reality under the influence of a mind that wants everybody's suffering to stop, and h that puts us on a path to becoming the one that will help everyone stop their suffering forever.

That could take a really long time, but it's doable.

If we have the seeds, we don't actually have to even be a high level middle capacity or even a high level first capacity person to be moved by hearing that that's possible—if we have the seeds.

But it doesn't mean that we can skip grades and start our practice at that level.

We should still revisit practices that we must have done lifetimes ago in which we close the door to the lesser rebirth. In which we get really strong in our ethical mindfulness and behavior choosing.

Then we use the power of that foundation to step into the greater way the practices of the greater capacity person.

The verse of the prayer is the one that says,

I've slipped and fallen into the sea of the suffering life

Bless me to see that every being,

Everyone my own mother has fallen in to.

I can't remember the last part of it,

Bless me then to take upon myself the… for freeing them all.

That's the point in which we're shifting from focusing on my own freedom to using all the practices that I do to gain my own freedom in order to turn those onto benefiting others.

It does not mean that we're going out and saying to all those others, You have to practice like this too. It's not that. We only do that when they ask.

But rather, our motivation for our own morality improvement is in order to become one who can help every other stop their suffering too. Same behaviors, different state of mind for why we do those behaviors. Makes the seeds planted by those behaviors become the seeds that will lead to our Buddhahood.

We learned, didn't we? In course 2, how deeds done with Bodhichitta become the causes of our Buddhahood.

Same deeds done without Bodhichitta become causes for our Nirvana, or closing door to lesser rebirth—depending on what our motivation was.

When we are recognizing this unnecessary-ness of suffering, meaning it's all a big mistake about where suffering comes from and where happiness comes from, we just need to hear something that shifts our attention from that focused on me to that's true for everybody. And we've made this step into the greater capacity.

The greater capacity has two parts.

The first part, JANG-SEM KYE-TSUL, which means how to grow my Bodhichitta.

JANG-SEM = the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings

KYE-TSUL = how to grow that wish

The second step is, once I've grown the wish, how do I act upon that wish?

CHU-PA CAP-TSUL

To grow the wish and then how to behave according to the wish.

Growing the wish comes from a logical series of:

If it's true that this present moment of awareness was produced by one before,

then that means you can never find a first moment of awareness.

That means it must be true that I have had past lifetimes.

Then, if that's also true going forward,

then it means that I will never not be—not me Sarahni, but the subject side me,

there will always be a moment that comes after.

If the past is true, infinite past lifetimes,

it means we've been every kind of being possible.

It means we've been in every kind of relationship with every being that is possible.

So any being that we are in any kind of relationship within this life, we've been that being's father, son, mother, daughter, murderer, enemy, best friend, coworker—all of it. We've been everything for everybody.

Then, if that's true, somewhere along the way, we've been everybody's mother—at least once and probably more than once.

If that's true, it means everybody has been my mother in some lifetime at some point.

Mothers, whether you're the guppy mother or the cow mother, or the human mother, mothers go to great danger to have babies and to care for those babies long enough to increase their likelihood of survival.

So any mother we've ever had, no matter her quality, no matter how much we liked her, she gifted us this life, whatever life it was for as long as we had it.

And as a result, there's a karmic connection that makes them a powerful karmic object, and makes them someone who has benefited us.

That we grow this wish to pay them back and to pay them back in a way that helps them reach the end of their suffering forever. It's one thing to pay somebody back by buying them flowers and then the flowers wilt, and they're gone.

We've paid them back, we've done our due.

But how wonderful it would be if we could also help them in such a way that they go on to reach their own Nirvana or Buddhahood.

That's possible.

So this growing our wish comes through these specific steps. We'll learn them in greater detail. You guys already know them.

But we review that again and again and again in our meditation in order to get these Ahas about the suffering that we see in our world, and how it is such that we could influence those others in a way that will help them go on to end that suffering forever.

That's growing our JANG-SEM KYE-TSUL.

Then, how do we do it when we're finally motivated enough to act on it?

That's where there are two levels of how we do it.

We start at the DO level, which is the sutra level of acting from our growing Bodhichitta. The DO level, the sutra level, is the learning to live according to the six perfections: the perfection of giving, sharing, the perfection of moral discipline. We've already been doing that. The perfection of not getting angry, the perfection of joyous effort, the perfection of meditative concentration, or any concentration, and the perfection of wisdom.

We'll study those in depth what it means, to be a practice of giving versus the perfection of giving.

As we work with each of those perfections, they feed each other and grow each other. It's not like we're working on our giving until we have it perfectly before we work on our moral discipline. We'll focus on one, but we're using the others to help us in that focus. We're growing them all together. All of them designed in the same way as the moral discipline increases our concentration, increases our wisdom, our perfection of giving increases our moral discipline, increases our ability to not get angry when situations happen that are unpleasant, increases the enjoyment of things, whether they're pleasant or unpleasant, which increases our meditative concentration on our cushion, and increases our drenpa and sheshin on our behavior off cushion. And that grows the goodness that allows our mind to penetrate into the emptiness of our meditation object when we get there in our meditation session.

What was the moral discipline meditation wisdom in the earlier trainings is now happening in the six perfections, in the greater practitioner trainings.

Which we wouldn't be able to do if we didn't have the foundation already grown from our earlier practices.

Then, as the power of our goodness increases from our effort in our perfection of our six perfections, our goodness grows. Our understanding of emptiness intellectually grows. Our sense of the purity of our world grows.

As the sense of the purity of our world grows, we actually start having experience of somebody or circumstances that are just so amazing, so out of the box like magical, that we start thinking, Whoa, were they like an angel or something coming to help me? How was it that just this whole sequence of events could have happened so easily to get me that new job? I couldn't have done that. Maybe I'm in the care of holy beings after all. We could do our six perfectionions, such that what's called the secret way, the Vajrayana, starts to happen in our world.

The Vajrayana also called NGAK, which means secret words, mantra. Which is what actually tantra means.

That process of making the shift from open teachings as a main practice to secret teachings as a main practice formally happens through receiving an initiation from a qualified teacher. Which may or may not be your sutra teacher, may or may not be an ordained person. Through the teachings of the secret way you learn the methods, just ways to hold your mind differently as you practice your six perfections that make those six perfections seed plantings be so powerful that we can see results within this lifetime, they say. Part of that result is changing our experience of what we would call death. But the point is you can make this transformation of yourself and your world without losing the continuity of your practice. Like having to go into another human birth and be the baby and grow up, and not meet the dharma till you're 12. You'll finish it off without that kind of interruption.

In order for this progress, actually, in order for any of this progress from first capacity to highest capacity to happen, our meditative concentration needs to be at the level that SHAMATHA can occur. SHAMATHA and VISPASHYANA are mainly talked about within the greater capacity, the Mahayana teachings, not only of course. But that SHAMATHA state of mind, they call it calm abiding, which means we are so effortlessly concentrated on our powerful karmic object in meditation that that concentration is pulling the winds that move our mind closer into the center.

The winds and minds move in tandem.

You've got a mind going all over the place, you've got winds going all over the place.

As your mind comes stiller and stiller, the winds come stiller and stiller.

As the winds come stiller and stiller, the mind can get stiller and stiller.

As it gets so still and the winds become so calm, that brings on a physical pleasure. That is a danger of being a distraction, but in fact is a clue that you're getting close enough to actually penetrate into the emptiness of your object and be able to move from conceptual to direct. The physical pleasure first, it's a physical sensation. Very subtle though. It's not the body, it's inside.

Then that physical pleasure instills a mental pleasure. With both, the mental pleasure and the physical pleasure, now we've got a mind that can fully penetrate into the no-self-nature nature of our object. Now that's going to take thinking, right? So SHAMATHA itself is beyond any sensory input. But then we take that mind of SHAMATHA and we impose cognitive thoughts, thinking thoughts, to think through, to reach the no-self-nature of the object of our meditation, and then use the SHAMATHA to penetrate that and rest there.

That ability to do that allows the development of our Bodhichitta to get more and more direct. Our wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all beings is cognitive, heart-based. When it becomes direct, that's what we're calling the direct perception of emptiness.

We have those two ways that Bodhichitta, that word is used.

One means the direct perception of emptiness, and the other one means I want to reach my Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings.

The greater capacity practitioner is working on our six perfections having come to this conclusion that Nirvana is great, and I want every existing being to experience that or better. I understand about karma and emptiness well enough to understand that I can create that.

The Lama will encourage us and correct us, and keep us going on the right track as these stages are moved through.

Shamatha & Vipashyana

To finish your homework, I need to give you the definitions of SHAMATHA and VIPASHYANA.

Shamatha is that single-mindedness, which is imbued with the exceptional bliss of practiced ease due to deep single pointed concentration on your object.

Just write it down. Write it down six times, and then write it down on your homework, and then write it down on your quiz.

I don't care if it makes sense or not, just memorize it.

Look at the answer key to get it right.

That single-mindedness, which is imbued with the exceptional bliss of practiced ease due to deep single pointed concentration on the object

Vipashyana—insight

This one really doesn't make sense. So just write it down.

That wisdom, which is full of exceptional bliss of practiced ease, by the power of the analysis of its object, and which is founded upon quietude, Shamatha.

That wisdom which is full of exceptional bliss, of practiced ease, by the power of the analysis of its object and which is founded upon Shamatha.

We will talk more about it.

I do have more to say. Good enough. You can do your homework.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Done.

I do apologize for the mess up on these things. Hopefully it's all done, right? Yay. For all of us.

[Usual closing]

Thank you. Thanks everybody. Bye-Bye. See you next time.

Extra Class 1: Q&A and Applied Meditation on Drenpa & Sheshin

11 February 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Extra Class 1

All right, so for the recording, welcome again. We are in the ACI course Sunday-Thursday evening group in our extracurricular activity classes on February 11th, 2024.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do please.

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Usual opening]

Q&A

How to debate?

Someone had asked recently that in another course that they're taking, part of their assignment is to debate the class, some topic from the class. And it wasn't so clear exactly how to do that.

Although that's not part of our meditation class, I suspect that it would be helpful for all of us to understand that, to learn this game. It's like a game. I think of it as a game.

What I have to share is how I figured out to carry out the debate assignment that I had in my coursework, because I didn't know how to do it either.

I didn't really have access to anybody who knew any better than me when I was supposed to be teaching it to other people. So this was a long time ago, early 2000s.

I had been invited to Canada to teach some people the review courses and we were working on review course 18, and within 18 is the course on logic.

They said, Teach us how to do this debate. And it's like, I mean I know how, but I don't really know how. So it was like on the spot, let's figure it out right now.

So together we've figured out a method that's a little different than the classic Tibetan debate ground, but it uses the same methodology.

But I call it baby debate, because I feel like a total kindergartner. But I have to share that that's the method that I've used and used and used and used.

There was a time, as we were getting ready to, no, we did a maroke right at the beginning of our three-year retreat before we went into silence.

Sumati and I were leading the maroke for our other retreaters. I mean they're all smarter than us, but we'd just done it before and some of them hadn't.

Maybe it was at the end of the retreat anyway, it doesn't matter.

But you know Ben Kramer, he is like a debate wizard and he terrifies me to debate with, to be honest with you. Don't tell him I said that.

He and somebody else were going at it, and it was going on for a long time.

Then I stepped in and I don't even remember what I said, but it brought Ben Kramer to a halt, like his jaw dropped. Then we came to our conclusion, and a few months later somebody said that Ben Kramer had said to them that the sharpest debater is that Sarahni Stumpf. And my jaw dropped because I don't know, maybe he was kidding, but I felt so honored that my system worked, you see?

So I feel confident because of Ben Kramer's, what do you call that? He like reaffirmed that it's okay for me to teach you what I used to crank up my ability to think logically by way of using my homeworks to teach myself how to do it—meaning with somebody else. So my friend, my husband was the somebody else that I learned on, and he learned on me. It's nice to have a forgiving partner.

I'm going to try and describe how to use the principles of debat, but in this way that is more directly helping us think of the ramifications of the statements that we're hearing. I wrote out a little bit of stuff.

Debate method

1 state topic to be considered

2 state assertion about the topic

3 state the reason to prove the assertion about the topic

Check:

Do topic and reason have a relationship? 1 and 3?

If so, check if 3 then 2?

If reason were true, would it necessarily be true that the assertion is true?

If so, check if not 2 then not 3?

If the assertion is not possible, does that necessarily mean that the reason is not possible?

If so, then the proof holds.

Give example:

1 and 3?

If 3 then 2?

If not 2 then not 3?

We learned this a little bit in ACI course 2 and those who have done the 13 already, it's familiar, right?

The debate method, the how to establish a logical syllogism is we state the topic to be considered.
We then state the assertion about the topic, what we want to say is true, prove to be true about the topic.
Then we state the reason to prove the assertion about the topic. There's lots to say about what makes a reason able to prove an assertion, but let's not go there.

Then the method that we use to check to see if that reason in fact proves the assertion about the topic is a sequence that first we check to see is the reason we've given for the assertion, does the statement of our reason and the statement of our topic, do they have some relationship in our world?

If our answer is no, those two things have absolutely no connection, then that cancels the whole logical argument. You don't have to check any further.

If you can find some kind of connection between the topic and the reason we've stated, then we can go on and check further.

The second check is to look at the reason given and just think if the reason were true, would that necessarily mean that the assertion must be true?

Not „Is it true in our reality?“. Just logically thinking, If the reason is true, does that necessarily mean the assertion about the topic must also be true. We'll see.

If you go, No, it isn't necessarily true of the assertion just because the reason is right. Well then you throw the whole thing out.

If you see it and go, yeah, that would be true, then we need to check the third statement.

The third statement or the third check is if you negate the assertion, does that necessarily negate the reason given—not in reality, not inexperience just logically by deduction? If the assertion is impossible, does that necessarily mean the reason is impossible?

If that holds, if that's true, then we have the first relationship was held, the second relationship held and the third relationship held. That would mean that the reason we gave for the assertion about the topic, in fact proves our assertion to be true.

Then it wouldn't matter whether emotionally you wanted to agree with it or not. We would have intellectually, logically proven it.

To actually come up with a logical syllogism, like one syllogism that proves something is very difficult. Usually you have to work your way through a series of syllogisms to get back to showing the truth of the first one.

That's not what we're going to do. That's what happens on the debate ground.

In the texts, the dura[?] text and the others that are teaching logic, if you remember reading that material from course 13, it's like you do 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 different syllogisms to finally get around to proving or disproving the first one.

With this system in mind, it's saying we're comparing things: the topic, the reason, and the assertion. They come in a different order, but we're comparing them in this order.

This is the equation that they give.

Number one is our stating topic.

Number three is the reason.

First you check: does 1 and 3 hold?

If it does, if 3 is true, then 2 is true hold.

If so, then if you negate 2, if not 2, does not 3 hold?

But that's not what we're going to use actually, for our debating our homework.

We're going to use the process but not actually these steps.

What happens then in a debate is you have the two debaters.

Let's say we have the leader and we have the answerer.

So if you and your friend are going to do your debate assignment for your homework, let's say homework number 1.

Somebody gets to be the leader, and they're going to state the topic under consideration.

Then they have two options:

They can give an incorrect assertion about the topic and then a good reason for the incorrect assertion about the topic.
Or they can give a correct assertion about the topic, but an incorrect reason for the assertion.

Then the game is for the answerer to be able to weed away if it's a wrong reason for a good assertion, weed that away and come up with the correct reason for the assertion. Or to recognize that the assertion is incorrect even though the reason makes it seem correct, and weed away the wrong assertion.

In the process of doing this, both of us are reviewing the material, and thinking about it in such a way that helps us learn it and remember it because of this unusual context in which we are sharing it with somebody.

All of that needs to be done in yes or no questions.

Our tendency is to say, Let's talk about question, homework 1, question 3, name the 6 preliminaries, what are the six preliminaries?

And we ask the partner to just tell them, and that apparently is not such an efficient method of learning. Somehow this method that seems not efficient at all, drives it home somehow better. I don't know why.

So let's just do an example.

The homework 1, question 3, it says:

List just the names of the 6 preliminaries that should be performed before a meditation session.

It says, Don't confuse them with the 7 ingredients that we'll study in next class.

Then the answer is clean, tidy the room, set up the altar offerings, right? You know the list, you just did your final.

But if we're going to use that for our debate assignment, what the leader might start out with is in stating the topic. What if the leader says,

Let's consider the preliminaries for meditation.

So now if you are the answerer, what's going through your mind so far? I'm really asking.

Let's consider the preliminaries for meditation.

Natalia: You're just stating a topic, what are we going to be discussing,

Lama Sarahni: Right. I'm stating the topic.

But if you're the answerer, so if you've stated that to me and I'm the answer, I'm thinking,

Do they mean the six conditions of the environment?

Or do they mean within the environment, those different conditions conducive, that make it conducive?

Or are they going to be talking about the six steps of a meditation practice?

Or are they going to be talking about that 7 preliminaries?

The topic being stated is vague, and it's intentionally vague from the leader's side. Because they're wanting us to think. What's she talking about here?

Because already we're going through the card catalog of our mind of all the different possibilities.

So let's consider the preliminaries for meditation.

There are 6 of them.

So there's my assertion:

There are six of them.

And here's my reason:

Because there are multiple factors in creating a conducive space.

So the answerer is thinking, is there a correlation between the preliminaries of meditation and the multiple factors of a conducive space?

Yes? Yeah, we did learn that. Maybe that's what she's talking about.

In which case are there 6 of them?

Well yeah, we did learn about the six factors of a conducive environment, but we learned that within the conducive environment is the conducive space, and that had 4 or 5 or 6 factors of its own. So wait, I'm not sure that that's what she's talking about.

So, I don't think I can agree with that statement, because I'm not really clear where she's going.

As the answerer in our initial what we've received, we can answer yes or no.

That's all, we either agree or we disagree.

If you say yes, then be prepared to stand by your answer with an explanation for why it's true. Until you say yes, you are not responsible for any long explanation.

As soon as you say yes, the leader is going to lead you if not right away to say, Explain why you say yes. Give the answer. In Tibetan it is ‚show‘. It really is ‚show‘ and it means show me what you mean.

But you don't get to say that until you say yes to something that the leader said.

So, let's consider the preliminaries for meditation.

I say there are six of them, because there are many multiple factors in creating a conducive place.

So is anybody going to say yes?

No, no, anybody's going to say yes, which means everybody's going to say no.

Logic, I just use logic there.

Then, no.

Now my job as the leader is to respond to you.

So are you saying that there are not multiple factors in the preliminaries to meditation?

Now your response, you can just say, No again. Or you can say, I didn't say that.

Then there's a third option. You can say, Not necessarily so, which has a little different meaning.

So are you saying there's no multiple factors in our preliminaries to meditation?

No, I didn't say that. There are multiple factors for our meditation preliminaries.

So you're saying there's another reason for there being six preliminaries?

Do you see? I went back to using my assertion, there's 6 preliminaries.

When you said it's not necessarily true that there are not multiple factors, then I say, Oh, so you're saying that there's a different reason for those 6 preliminaries? Is that what you're saying? There's a different reason for the 6 preliminaries?

Natalia: No, I didn't say that.

Lama Sarahni: No, you didn't say there is a different reason for the 6 preliminaries.

So you're saying that the multiple factors of creating a conducive space is the reason for there being 6 preliminaries to meditation?

Not necessarily so, you can say. Not necessarily so. Oh.

It puts me in a loop, because it means not necessarily. So means it's either not true that there are 6 preliminaries? Or it's not true that there are multiple factors creating a conducive space that are the reason for the six preliminaries?

So are you catching onto the nuance? Is: The conditions of a conducive place are different than the 6 preliminaries to meditation. So you the listener, no, you the answerer, is trying to keep saying, Not necessarily so, I didn't say that. Until I snag myself into a circle.

Then finally I'm going to say something that makes you say, Yes.

So let's see how I got there.

So you said, No, not necessarily that the 6 conducive environment is proof of the 6 preliminaries to meditation.

So the 6 preliminaries to meditation are different than the multiple factors of a conducive place.

So you're saying the 6 preliminaries are different than the multiple factors for a conducive place?

Yes.

When you say yes, I get to say, Show me. What are those 6 preliminaries then if they're not the multiple factors to a conducive place?

That's when you get to say they are clean and tidy your room, set up your altar, put out offerings.

What's the next one? Refuge in Bodhichitta.

What's the next one?

Siau-Cheng: Visualize the collected Lamas and holy beings.

Lama Sarahni: Right, what's the next one?

Siau-Cheng: Gathering good energy and clarify obstacles.

Lama Sarahni: And the next one.

Siau-Cheng: Request for blessing from the holy beings.

Lama Sarahni: Correct. So now, if when you gave your show, you said:

Clean and tidy the room, set out offerings, sit down and start your breath meditation, do your seven limbs and then get up and leave the room.

My job would be to point out which of those are this part of the six preliminaries and which ones were not by way of asking yes or no questions that would help you come to see, Oh, maybe getting up and leaving the room is not part of the six preliminaries.

If I as the leader become aware that when you're giving your yes answer and showing, you aren't remembering what they are, I as the leader can give you clues, right?

A mean leader is going to let you sweat.

But a nice leader is going to say, Oh, is one of them something to do with the teachers that teach us?

And then you go, Oh yeah, it's visualize the llamas of the lineage.

See so, you can still go back and forth when the answer is being given and the leader can help give clues so that the answerer is staying on the right track.

When we do it that way, both of us are trying to think a step or two ahead to be able to help the other one out so that we can both end up with the correct answer to the homework.

It takes longer than let's just read the answer key together. But in the process of doing so, we've learned how to think a step or two ahead, and how to see that if what they said was true, what would that imply? If what they said was false, what would that imply and what does the implication, Tell me about what my answer's going to be?

It can get very smooth actually and helpful.

Let's do a different example.

Consider the preliminaries for meditation.

Still being vague about it.

My assertion is:

There are 13 of them.

Now you're already thinking, what does she mean, 13?

Where'd she get that number 13?

Why would she say 13?

We didn't learn anything about 13.

What does she have to say about why she says there's 13?

Because, I say, we were taught there were six conditions with seven ingredients, and that makes 13.

Therefore my reason there are 13 preliminaries for meditation must be true.

In this example, the reason is wrong, but no, I'm sorry, the assertion is incorrect, but the reason for the assertion is correct and that would make us wonder.

Wait, maybe I know the assertion is wrong, but her reason fits.

She's smarter than me.

I must misunderstand the assertion.

No. Hold to your guns.

Nobody ever said 13 preliminaries.

So here we go again.

Consider the preliminaries for meditation.

There are 13 of them

because we were taught there are six with seven ingredients.

So your first answer is either yes or no.

What are you going to say?

No.

So you are saying that we were not taught the six preliminaries with seven ingredients?

I didn't say that right.

So you're saying we were taught those, but they're not the preliminaries?

Not necessarily so. I didn't say that.

So are you saying that just because we learned six preliminaries with the seven ingredients, that that does not mean there are 13 different preliminaries?

Oh, there goes a yes, I saw yeses.

Okay, so show me.

How is it that the six preliminaries, which include seven ingredients is not 13?

Siau-Cheng: Because the ingredient is just one.

Lama Sarahni: Right. There you go. Because the seven ingredients are part of number five.

Siau-Cheng: Yes.

Lama Sarahni: Oh, thank you. I thought there were 13. Done.

You write it on your homework debate. Done.

Really, it's that easy, and actually fun, really, to be on both sides to work our way around learning some material by way of weeding away misperceptions, even if the misperception was made up for the purpose of the exercise.

What it grows is our ability to take a situation that is more subtle and nuanced, and apply a similar kind of reasoning. Because we've done it in this simple silly way, we're able to do so when we have either a homework question that we really don't understand and we're trying to work into the nuances of it together with another person, we've developed this ability to think clearly about the implications of what the words are trying to say.

Work it out together without saying let's just explain it to each other.

The explaining it to each other doesn't give us the opportunity to really weed out the way this yes-no question answer does. It does take some getting used to.

But it's fun when we get the hang of it.

Again, if you and your partner are doing your homework and the partner figures out, she's talking about the six preliminaries to meditation and we're trying to list them, and we can't remember, leaders step in and give them clues.

Help them be successful in giving you the right answer.

We want those seeds to help.

All right, so any questions about how to use your debate for your homework?

Flavia, it was you that asked that question, will that help you?

Okay.

I know there's a few more that are doing classes that need it. So will that help you who are doing it? Okay.

All right. Have fun with that.

How to use the Lam Rim as a Meditation Object?

(44:45)

The other thing I was asked was: How do we use the Lam Rim, for instance, the Source of All My Good as my meditation object? How do we actually do that?

Let me see if I can help that be a little more clear.

Remember we learned that there are these three different kinds of meditation that we're trying to grow the skills for all three, all at the same time.

The fixation meditation, review meditation and analytical meditation.

The prayer Source of All My Good is this series of verses, I think there's 14 of them.

Each one of those verses holds within it one or more steps of the outline of the realizations that we cultivate in our aspiration to become a being who can help that other in that deep and ultimate way.

It's short and concise enough, but complete enough that we can use it through our whole career as a way of watching our own progress once we've learned it well.

The first stage of using Source of All My Good as the meditation object is to use our meditation sessions to get familiar with it, to learn it.

We do that through the review meditation part.

Then we can also use those verses, or just a few lines of the verses, as an analytical meditation, using the statement as the topic of consideration that we then take in and argue with our mind about its implications for our behavior in our lives—until we reach a deeper understanding of what's meant by that topic.

When we reach some kind of, Oh, I get it a little better, hold that feeling of, Oh, I get it as a fixation object, fixed on that. The mind won't hold it. We'll slip out, we go back, get it again, hold it again.

The process might be that:

Suppose we give ourselves 30 minutes for our entire session. Wait, let me see. Did I say entire session or session after the preliminaries?

Yeah, 30 minutes for your entire session. Let's suppose so.

You give yourself the first 10 minutes for your settling into the breath and doing the preliminaries, and that you use the settling in with the breath for the counting the 10 followed by the preliminaries, using that time to make strong effort on your ability to fixate on your meditation object.

So fixating on the sensation of the breath.

There it is. There it is, there it is, there it is.

We're going to talk about how to actually do that.

Then the same effort. Effort is not quite the right word. The same attention that we're using to be on the breath as the object, we want that same quality of mind as we are at the same time bringing up the different ideas within the meditation preliminaries. Our ideal mind is doing stuff, much more than it was with the breath.

But our quality of fixation, the watcher paying attention to what's being presented by our own mind is trying to stay on it without bouncing off. Oh, lunch, oh wait.

So we're actually, we're doing our breath and preliminaries, but also training our fixation meditation at that time.

Then, at the end of our preliminaries, we let loose a little bit, shift and wiggle.

We go back in, always using the few breaths in order to turn our minds back in.

Then we would set our timer for 5 minutes, for instance, of a review meditation.

So review is the time when we are reviewing the topic over and over again to burn it into our mind, to habituate to it.

So for The Source of All My Good, until we're really really familiar with it, this part of our meditation could actually be: open your eyes and read it.

But read it with a fixation state of mind, carefully attending, listening to yourself.

Go through the whole thing once. It doesn't take that long.

As you do get more familiar, if you do actually memorize it, then you say it.

You can whisper it out loud, you can say it in your mind's ear, is that what we say, to do your review.

We can review something that we've memorized, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah—and never actually pay attention.

We are so sophisticated as doers and multitaskers, we can think, Oh, I just recited the source of all my good, but if I really stop and think about it, I wasn't paying any attention.

Like reading a book. You go, you finish the chapter. What did I just read? I don't remember. Because I was thinking about 17 million different things.

So even during our review meditation where we're trying to focus carefully on it.

Which means we need some kind of tools to recognize when we're off, or when we're on, and when we're bright, and when we're though, right?

That's what we're going to try and work on the next few classes to see if we can identify those different states of mind.

Because if we can recognize them, we can do something with them.

If we don't recognize them, we don't know we have a problem if we don't know what the problem feels like.

So, you would do the review.

At the end of your five minutes, use a timer, shift and wiggle, then sink back in.

That is 10, 15.

We have 15 more minutes.

So of those 15, you could take all 15 for your analytical section of your meditation. For this, if we're first starting using The Source of All My Good as our meditation career object, we would want to even analyze: Where are we? In terms of stepping onto the first path of the Lam Rim.

Our review meditation, we've already become quite clear. The first step is taking a spiritual teacher, and we won't even be interested in taking a spiritual teacher if we haven't reached some kind of Aha about life that there's something wrong with this picture, and gone searching for an answer.

So one might do a series of analytical meditations over a period of time that's just checking: Here I am in a lineage that's puts the power into the hands of a teacher.

Why is that important?

Is that really what I'm looking for?

What am I looking for?

Why am I looking for something else?

What's wrong with life?

It's not so bad. I come, I'm studying all this stuff.

What brought me here?

Ask yourself all those questions and honestly see what answers your heart gives you, and gain some clarity about why we're here, and what brought us here.

Take your time to do it.

The process of doing this analysis, really, really checking in carefully with this state of mind that's questioning, questioning, questioning, will either bring us to a conclusion that says, This is in fact not my path. Which is valid.

The idea is that our level of the quality of heart called renunciation grows, that I'm just sick of the ups and downs in lives.

And if there's a way to change that, I want that.

And if it's left up to me, it's going to take me a really long time to figure it out, it seems.

And if there's somebody who has figured it out, would they be interested in sharing it with me?

And if so, who might they be? What do I look for?

And it's like, oh, I'm looking for a spiritual teacher and then who's qualified?

Who would I trust?

Because the whole system isn't trust somebody because everybody else trusts them. It's find somebody that we have this match, that is a match for us that will teach us. So, the analytical meditation is very thinking.

It's not that different than our day-to-day minds if we're thinking human beings.

But it's very, very focused and determined, and penetrative as a meditation topic.

But not until we have the skill for that. Because otherwise it'll be just like any other trying to figure something out where we just tap into it and bounce off because scary or uncomfortable and think of this, but then think of seven different things before we get back to it, right?

That's not an analytical meditation. That's a distraction meditation.

We build the skill by trying, but it comes with the training effort, the practice effort. Once we get the Aha, we fixate on it.

We started with fixation meditation, and we end with a fixation meditation.

When our timer goes off, then we end with our usual ending preliminaries.

Oh, I just did some goodness, and I learned some stuff, and I am seeing how the process can unfold, and it's going to help me help that other in a better way.

That's a great goodness. And the lineage of the teachers are helping me do so. And thank you very much, and please stay close, and offer it, and dedicate.

By dedicating to everybody's benefit, our seeds are being fed in such way that our method of fixation, review, analysis, fixation gets easier and more pleasurable, and easier and more pleasurable.

It will begin to be such that you don't have to put a timer in between them. That your daily practice just flows from one to the other, because they'll be all tied together.

Okay, so suppose you do those preliminaries and then you go, Oh, I do see the value of taking a teacher. I do see the value of seeing the big picture to help me move along the steps to creating it for myself and my world.

Then reaching that place where, Oh, I do see the value of having a teacher, an in the flesh teacher that I can follow and use karmically actually.

Then we would be stepping into the first verse of the Lam Rim:

The source of all my good is my kind Lama.

And maybe you spend a week or two or a month contemplating that until we get some kind of Aha.

Then we may finally reach this, Okay, so I see the power of a teacher.

What are they going to teach me?

Get the essence of my life. What does that mean?

And we go to that next verse about how special a human life is, a human life in the dharma, et cetera.

So your review then might be, I'm reviewing the 8 leisures, 10 fortunes. Is that how it went?

You're not reviewing the whole Lam Rim anymore, because you step into your meditation and now your focus of attention is more specific.

So you review them, so you have them in mind.

You take them into your analytical meditation.

Do I really think that these are special?

Do I really believe that I created them?

Do I really believe that they're going to last?

Do I really believe they're an advantage?

You penetrate into them, their meaning reaching this, oh my gosh, this really is unique.

Then with that state of mind in another session, when you feel that's really penetrated, then you go to the next step of the Lam Rim as your meditation topic.

The next thing they teach is impermanence.

You could lose that advantage at any moment.

So then, if we don't know already the 9 factors in the death awareness meditation, that's the next step.

We would want to go and get more teachings on that if we needed.

If we'd had the teachings, we apply them there.

So really it can be a very self-led step. Until we get to a step where it's like, wow, I don't really understand this one at all.

That's where you go back to the teacher or find some teacher that says, could you explain to me this step in the Lam Rim so that I can analyze, penetrate, what it means for me, and how I work with it, and how I live by it.

So a Lam Rim meditation career, it's like we use it until we don't need it anymore, which means until we're fully enlightened.

The nuances just grow.

Somewhere along the way, there was a reading that made an outline of the Lam Rim from The Source of All My Good. I don't recall if it was from the Source of All My Good practice module, or if it was in the reading from this course, but when you come across it, outlines are dry for most of us. But have a peek at it, because it'll help you keep track of where your practice is going.

Alright, so any questions about that?

The person who asked isn't here, but she'll hear it on the recording, I'm sure.

If there's questions she can ask.

Okay, so let's take a break. Let's take a break. I'm pausing the recording.

(64:30)

Experiment on Sheshin & Drenpa

What I'd like to do for our time left is just to do some experimenting and see if we can experience some of these ideas that we've been talking about. I don't know how it'll go. We'll just see.

As I was digging through my material to prepare this class, I came across something that someone shared with me from 2009 at Diamond Mountain.

I had given a beginner's meditation course, and they gave me a synopsis of what I had taught. It was like, wow, did I do that?

So I'm just going to read it to you. We just did, it was ACI three in a nutshell.

Why do we meditate?

This person's take was to bring more happiness to my world, which includes me.

How do I do it?

Learn how from someone who knows, then practice what they teach you, then share what you've learned with somebody else.

Then learn more from someone who knows. Practice what they teach you and share it with someone else.

Get it?

Where do I do that?

In some special place. Or make your own place special by regular use of it for your meditation.

When do I do it?

Daily. Try to do so every day, so it becomes as habitual as brushing your teeth. Whatever time fits your schedule. But best for it to be the same time that fits your schedule.

Start small five or 10 minutes and build up slowly. Slow and steady reaches the goal. It's like, cool, I said that?

Then, what do we do?

Our minds take on the characteristics of what we expose it to.

Choose your meditation object according to what you want to see in your world in the future. A virtuous object will bring a happier mind, a happier you.

Ultimately, ultimate reality is what will bring the happiest mind. So find someone who knows how to teach you how to reach it.

How do you do that?

Learn from someone you know. Practice what they teach you. Share what you've learned with someone else. It's like it makes a loop. It was sweet.

Alright. What I'd like to try tonight is that I'd like for us to experiment with recognizing our drenpa state of mind. Like identifying the difference between the Me subject, Me subject watcher, Me watcher, catching, not watching anymore, and Me catcher letting go of the distraction and coming back to the object.

We were calling learning to put our mind on the object, learning how to training our drenpa state of mind, the state of mind that holds us on the object.

It needs to be trained, and then put into service—both on and off the cushion technically.

Those are just words, and I don't know what it feels like in your mind for the words I'm trying to use to describe what it feels like in my mind. So we can just explore it and see what we come up with.

I thought that we would use the breath sensations as our object of focus, not our meditation object, but because we're not meditating, we're exploring here.

So because they're there, always, they make a good focus of attention, because we don't have to do any effort to put them there the way we do with them with a visualization.

Then, what I hope I can help you do is recognize a state of mind that has some drenpa versus no drenpa at all.

Technically we never have none, but let's just say drenpa towards our attention to the sensation of breath, versus no drenpa towards our attention to the focus of sensations of our breath, which would mean we're thinking about something else.

Then see if I can help you become aware of what it feels like to catch yourself off the object.

In this experiment, I don't want you to work really, really hard to stay on the object.

I actually want you to fly off it.

What I think I'm going to do is make some noise or something.

I'm going to be the distraction—with great regret. I don't want those seats, but to help you.

So I'm telling you now, I don't want you to think, why was she so restless in that class? I'm doing it on purpose.

But I don't want to say, Now take your mind off your object. Because that won't work.

But when you catch it off, don't just pull it right back, catch it up. Whoa. That's what it feels like to recognize I'm off my object.

Note it. Identify it. Then come back.

So first we'll do the catching it off, and then we'll pay attention to what it feels like to come back on.

Then, if we still have time, we'll do the, what's that quality of mind that is so strong that it's wanting to go off, but it doesn't? Drenpa is so strong, you've got your mind tethered. Then what happens when all of a sudden that goes away?

I just want to explore that.

When we start, you decide what sensations of the breath that you want to be your focus of attention.

If you like the sensations at your nostrils, do that.

If you like the back of your throat, do that.

If you like that rise and fall of the chest, whatever your preference is.

I'll give us a minute or two for you to decide, because you might want to just check 'em out and see which one's the most interesting that you want to use for this experiment.

Actually, let's do that first.

Experiment #1 Drenpa on breath

Here's experiment number one.

I'm just going to say, Focus on your breath.

I'm going to give us two minutes that you check out the different sensations of your breath to decide which one you want to focus on.

When you have it, would you give me a nod or something?

Because once you close your eyes, keep 'em closed until I tell you, Okay, we're done.

Because I want to shift from one state of mind to the next, and I don't want you distracted in between.

So ready?

Just be comfortable. You don't have to be in a rigid posture, just be comfortable. We're exploring experiences here, I hope.

Settle in. Let's do two minutes looking for where the breath sensations are going to keep your attention the best.

Okay, go.

Has everybody decided?

Okay, focus. Focus on those sensations.

As you are aware of those sensations, there is a you, an observer you, and there are the sensations you are observing, and there is the concentrating on them.

And you have a sense of an awareness of those 3 aspects.

The you, the concentrating, focusing, and the sensations.

Now listen, there is a difference between your experience: She said, watch my breath. So that's what I'm doing.

And being keenly aware of focusing my attention on those sensations.

She said, Watch my breath. So that's what I'm doing, versus watcher me, keenly aware of those sensations.

Do they feel different?

Let yourself slide back to the, She said, watch my breath. So that's what I'm doing.

Kind of casual, kind of vague, pleasant.

Then tune it up to Me focusing on those sensations.

Now hold the focus on the intent, the sensations.

Can you feel the watcher You doing it, without losing the sensations?

Explore that. When you turn your attention to watcher You, that doesn't necessarily have the sensations.

Focus tightly on the sensations, there has to be the watcher You.

And you have both, watcher You and sensations.

Okay. Now be the watcher You on those sensations.

What happened to your mind?

Did you feel your attention shift?

Bring it back.

Do you feel your attention shift?

Catch it off, draw it back.

Those sensations, Me watching.

Catch it off, pull it back, invite it back.

Breath.

Right now, are you on the breath or off?

Bring it back.

Okay, good. So drop the breath.

Become aware of your body, your outer room.

When you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch.

And share what happened.

Help me understand, what went wrong?

What went on inside your experience?

Would you be more comfortable with me stopping the recording?

No. Yes, no. You want me to stop recording for your sharing or you're okay? It's okay. I got a thumbs up from Tom. Anybody else? Okay. Okay. Alright, thank you. We'll leave the recording going.

So could you recognize a Me and the sensations and the focusing to get a sense of those 3 aspects of the experience?

Tom got it. Anybody else? Yes, no? Yes, no. Feel free to say no. Yes. Okay, good, good, good.

Then, when I suggested there was a difference between just watching the breath and really watching the breath, could you feel the difference at all between this heightened intentionality and the sort of vague doing it? You're both on the object. Okay.

Then when the mind gets distracted, whether it was one of my noises or something else, what kinds of things popped your mind off the breath?

Did you recognize? What? Please share. Hello? Anybody out there?

Tom: I can share. I actually didn't notice your noises.

Lama Sarahni: You didn't even hear my noises. They weren't loud enough?

Tom: Maybe I just didn't notice it as I was focused. I did notice that there were things that you were saying and my inner voices were kicking in, like wanting to answer you. And then that took over. It made the sensation a little secondary in my experience and in my focus. And I think I caught myself maybe three or five times. I was trying to keep it in my fingers how many times I completely got off, left my body, was thinking about doing laundry kind of thing, completely off. And then you would say something and I'll come back to it.

But my fear was on and off or having dialogue with you, like answering you instead of my brain, but then the sensation will kick in. So it was just doing this really often.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. Good. You're pointing out how difficult this is, right? If I could just imprint this thing in your mind, you could be able to explore it without that inner dialogue happening. Okay.

So, Flavia was saying ideas took her off, cramps in her body, took her off. Sounds in your environment will take us off.

What I was trying to get was: Can you catch what the watcher feels like when you go, Oh, I'm off.

So Tom said she would catch her mind on laundry once I said something again.

So it was triggered by something else outside to come back rather than how much longer it would've taken of thinking about laundry before it would've been, Oh wait, I'm supposed to be on my breath.

I mean, my distractions in meditation are often more bright, clear and intense than my actual meditation object. Often. I'm telling you. And I get a lot out of them.

But I'm not technically on my object at all. It's not under my control.

That's what we're trying to get is, turn it on your meditation object. Later, turn it on that thing that wasn't a distraction that was so useful. It could be my meditation object if it was the one that I'd set myself up to do. But it wasn't. It was a distraction.

But then in the same token, if we have that ability to turn that kind of quality of focused attention on and off, you can turn it on when you need to solve a problem at work. It doesn't have to be just in meditation on the virtuous object.

The skills that we grow on our cushion, we use off our cushion.

And our effort to grow our mindfulness and recollection of our behavior choices off the cushion help our recollection and mindfulness on the cushion.

We're learning that connection.

We were trying to catch when something draws our watcher from the breath to it. Something arises and bang, our mind goes slamming up against it. And then it tends to start telling the story about it, and then we're engaged in it instead.

That means no drenpa. No recollection happening if we go off the object, slam into the distraction and then stay there going along with it until something happens. And all of a sudden… What I was trying to get was to take you off and then have you go, Oh, I'm off. How can I better do that?

Because I want to do that for you.

Or did we get it without my doing it?

Did you catch your mind going, Oh, I'm off the object.

Yeah? I have some nods. Okay.

That's something we actually want to train in.

There wasn't a stage of meditation focus on the Off the meditation object.

But in order to go from stage 1, 2, 3, 4, that's what we need to do, is actually focus on losing the object. Which means we don't have that object of focus, because we are on the object, on the sensations, on the sensations, on the sensations, on the sensations. And then it happens so fast. Blip. We're off.

So there's this watcher on, and there's this watcher for the going off—without being a distraction from the watcher on.

The only way we can train that is to actually get that watcher of the off object to actually step in and do something.

Like call in the dog trainer. But it's a part of our own mind that doesn't distract us. Here, we're still watcher. It's not like the whole watcher goes.

We're trying to learn to have this attendant go, oops, off, come back.

When we have that going on, this mind doesn't get so rattled by the being off.

We won't go down the story of the distraction, if there's a part of us that's still anchored in being the watcher of our meditation object.

When we have this one here to draw the mind and object back to, it will come back and hold a little longer.

So we're training our recollection state of mind to look to recognize I'm off the object.

Then we train our reactor, whoever the heck that is, to say, Oh, I'm not interested in that distraction. I'm interested in the me that's over here supposedly watching, and all of a sudden it's not.

I don't know how to explain it.

But take these ideas and then sit with some very simple object and wait until your mind jumps off the object.

In Mahamudra practice, they actually say that. Like, imagine your mind is inside a dark cave and you're sitting outside the cave and you're going to watch anything that comes out of your mind's got to come out this cave opening.

You park yourself there and you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and nothing comes out of the cave. Because you're so intently watching for something to come out of the cave and it doesn't come out.

I got so frustrated with that meditation that I went to the one who was teaching it and saying, I sit there and I wait forever and nothing ever comes out of the cave. And he goes, that's the point.

It's like, Oh, I didn't get that. I misunderstood.

Same with the losing the object.

We want to get to the point where we're so keenly watching it for it to happen that it never happens.

That's our drenpa state of mind that becomes the permanent holder on the object-er. That doesn't kick in and out. We just turn it on when we sit down to meditate, or we turn it on anytime we need it.

Technically we'd turn it on when we were driving. If we did, we'd be better drivers.

Turn it on when we're having a heated discussion. Turn it on.

Eventually it'll be on all the time.

But without feeling it and recognizing it, it turns on and off according to its own. I don't know, according to what, karma of course. But we want it under our control.

When we're finally on the object, and we've got that keenness of our drenpa that we never, there's just no danger of going off no matter what sound goes, no matter what knee hurts, we don't lose the object completely.

That's when we start exploring.

Is my mind bright on my object?

Is it bright and intense on the object?

Is it nervous on the object?

And those different states of mind, I'm also going to try to see if I can help you explore them. Like turn them on and turn them off, so that you'll be able to recognize them in your own sessions.

I'm going to figure out how to do that.

I would suggest that in whatever your meditation practice you're developing, in that first 10 minutes, when you're doing your breath and your preliminaries of meditation, at least with the breath part, work with this recognizing the drenpa kicking in. Like the catching off the object and coming back instead of working really, really hard to stay on the breath, let it let your mind slop around and catch it. Slop getting sloppy, getting off and okay, caught you. I know what it feels like now let's come back. Let's do it again. Okay. Caught it again. Great. Good job. Okay, caught it again. Great. Good job.

So that we can grow that ability, because we don't grow it just by using willpower to stay on the object.

So it's a little different instruction: Focus your mind on your breath and watch for losing it.

But I suggest you do that for a while.

All right, that's enough. Let's explore those.

I'll ask how it went in our next class.

When are we, Thursday evening, and then I think we'll go on to exploring dullness, Sheshin. Unless you have questions, you want me to go a different direction, just write to me and ask. My intention is for these to help you experientially.

So help me know what you need and I'll do the best I can.

[Usual closing]

Thank you so very much for the opportunity to share. I hope it's beneficial.

Extra Class 2: Overcoming Lelo

15 February 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Extra Class 2

Alrighty, welcome back. We are doing this deeper dive into the meditation course. February 15th, 2024.

Let's do our usual opening prayers, and then I will guide you through our preliminaries, the seven limb preliminaries.

What I'd like you to try to do during the preliminaries is, you listen to the instruction and then you apply the instruction. Then I give another instruction.

What I'd like you to try to be aware of is that you're applying your mind to the first instruction and then you hear me say something new. I'd like you to try to be really aware of your mind going off what you were doing, and going to listen to my voice. Not just doing it, but really be aware of that moment the mind goes flip, the attention goes flip. I mean we don't actually do that.

Then listen, apply, and then when I speak again, try to catch it.

Then we'll talk about it afterwards.

So let's gather our minds here as we usually do.

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Usual opening]

(00:10:01):

Settle back to your breath.

You're following those sensations out and in as one.

Counting 10 breaths without losing focus.

If you do, start back at one.

Now change the radio station to preliminaries‘ channel.

See before you that precious being.

Think of their good qualities.

Think of what inspires you, what you admire about them.

Feel that admiration, that inspiration and tell them about it.

Really naturally, our gratitude arises and we want to offer them something.

See yourself offering them any kind of exquisite, beautiful thing, and the exquisite beautiful thing of something from your practice.

Tell them.

See how happy they are with you.

Then you ask them to please help you clear your heart of negativity.

Tell them about something you did, or said, or thought that you recognize when somebody does that to you, you will not like it.

Tell them, feel your regret.

Tell them of the regret.

Offer this class as your antidote and make your promise to refrain from doing that same deed in some specific timeframe.

Now into that space, pour the water of rejoicing practice.

Tell them of some kindnesses that you have done recently.

Tell them of kindnesses you've seen someone else do.

Then ask them to please, please stay close to you.

Ask them to please continue to guide you and inspire you, and teach you.

Ask them to help you recognize them teaching you, even from others and situations that don't look like them.

Then dedicate the goodness that we've done just so far to all beings reaching their total and perfect happiness.

Then bring your attention back to your body, back to your room.

When you're ready, open your eyes.

Take a stretch.

Could you catch the awareness of your mind going from your topic to my next instruction? Could you feel it?

It occurs to me that in doing a guided meditation, our intention is to help people go deeper and deeper, but our own seeds are interrupting people and it's like, Oh man, I got to work with that one.

There must be a pung sumpa there somewhere. But that kind of explained some stuff for me.

But I won't stop doing it.

What I'd like to do in this class is explore that first problem more specifically.

The first problem to becoming a meditator is the lelo, the „I don't feel like it“.

But even before that, to even have the idea that „I want to meditate“, so that on any given day I don't feel like it, I'm not going to do it, we need to get to the preliminary. We need to get to the platform where we can even have the first obstacle.

Then, once we decide, Oh, meditating. Do I really want to try it on for size?

(00:24:52):

We know the four antidotes to the first obstacle. I don't want to meditate.

What were those four? You guys know, you just did your final.

What's the first one? The first antidote to „I don't want to meditate“?

Natalia: To feel inspired.

Lama Sarahni: You get inspired. You get exposed to it and something clicks.

Oh, that's interesting. That looks beneficial.

How many things have we been newly exposed to, and there's just no attraction there? Like all kinds of stuff, right?

Then, has there been at least one experience in your life where you were exposed to something new and it was like, Whoa, that looks interesting. I think I want to do that.

Anybody have that experience? I already told you mine. It was one of many actually.

Anybody not had that experience?

Because if we don't have something to relate to, this antidote will be hard to find.

Not spiritually, just regular old life.

When we were kids, right? The other kids are playing violin, Nah.

But somebody's playing a flute, Oh, maybe I'd like to play the flute.

Whether you ever did or not, you had the feeling right? You can remember having that feeling.

Suppose we got introduced to meditation, and maybe we tried it out without much success, without much instruction. After a little while we just found it to be boring or a waste of time and so we left it.

It would leave us not likely to make the effort to go seek out someone to teach us better, unless those few little experiences gave us a glimpse of something, or unless we got more exposure to it through someone who maybe has had good experience with it so that we are learning, Oh, there's more to it than just sitting down and trying to blank my mind out. Oh, there's more to it, and there's actually a method that I can learn it. And this person who's exposing me to it, they look, they're interesting, their behavior is interesting, what they're telling me about meditation is interesting.

We're gathering the research through which we decide: Is this something that I want to investigate? I want to try or not?

Again, with that experience before, where you had some new experiences like, Oh, this is interesting. Maybe I'd like to do more of that. Remember back, what did you do?

Maybe as a kid you didn't do anything. Your parents figured out where do you go for flute lessons? How much is it going to cost? But they'll tell you, You need to practice an hour a day. If you're not going to do that, I'm not going to keep paying for your lessons. If you want your own flute, then let's go do a lemonade stand and raise half the money for it. You raise half and I'll give you half, and we'll get you that flute. But you need to be serious, 9-year-old, whoever.

Same with the sports. As adults, when we take on something new, we've figured out, is there a coach? What's it going to cost? And then we make this decision, this calculated decision. I want to try.

So again, think back in life, where have you already done that?

I mean, you're all proficient at something, whether it's your work career or other things. How did you gain that proficiency?

We worked at it, didn't we?

Now maybe some of the things we're proficient at and we worked to get them, we did so for reasons that are different than what we're talking about.

But still it means that we understand the feeling of what it is to have this goal, see a goal, be attracted to the goal, calculate whether it's worth the effort and decide I'm going to apply the effort.

Then applying the effort. At first, the applying the effort is strenuous, isn't it?

I mean the little kid playing the flute, I want to be able to play that particular song that I heard. And the flute teacher says, no, you need to learn your scales.

Scales are so boring. I don't want to do boring scales. Just teach me how to play that song.

Well, okay, here's the song. Play it.

Puff. There's no way until you know the scales that you can play the song and have it sound like a song.

So somewhere along the way we went from, Yeah, I want that. To, Yeah, it's worth the effort to being willing to put in the effort.

Do you see how this thing lelo is shifting?

At first it was, I don't know anything about it.

Then it's like, Oh, I'm curious. And then I'm curious enough to want to try.

So three quarters of lelo is gone once we've made the determination, I'm going to try.

It takes a while for most of us between the ‚I'm trying‘ and the continued trying is so fun that you've overcome obstacle number one.

So remember when you were learning that new skill, Do I have to do that again?

A whole hour of nothing but scales? Come on teacher.

But we must have stuck with it if we gained some proficiency at that new skill, right? Shayla, I know your training for your marathons and et cetera weren't fun at the beginning, were they?

No. I mean maybe they were fun at the time, but the next day or two couldn't have been fun. When your body just hurts and aches. But then you made yourself go do it again and do it again. Because something inside was saying, my goal is so important to me that I'm willing to make the effort even though the actual effort, it can be unpleasant.

But then I'm guessing that at some point a shift happens and that the training becomes as enjoyable or maybe even more so than the competition.

I know that was true for me. The volleyball skills became more fun than a competition. Competition's fun, but the skills you're working with your nuances of your technique and you don't get to do that when you're playing a match. So at some point the training was as fun as the result. When we reach that, it's like there's a part of us that always wants to be doing that.

So there was this 15 or 20 year period of my life where all I wanted to be doing was playing volleyball.

(00:35:55):

I did a whole bunch of other stuff, but in the back of my mind, This Saturday, we'll go to the beach and play. Wednesday, I get to go to Santa Monica gym. Tuesday, I get to go to Culver City Gym.

It was all mapped out so that my whole professional day was so that I could get to volleyball gym in the afternoon, in the evening.

Overcome problem number one.

But it took years to get there. Years of training.

Again, I want you to think back in your own life and find something that you can recognize this sequence that you went through.

We have time this evening to even share those if you'd like, because to know that others have done it adds to our rejoicables‘ list, which we're going to need.

So I'll share mine. I apparently did all of that as a kid so young that I don't even remember learning how to water ski. Like in my memory I just always knew how to short start on a one ski. I don't remember learning, but I must have liked it enough to do it. Then I learned power volleyball. Then I learned how to vegetable garden. Then I learned how to do medical care. Then I learned how to do acupuncture. Then I learned how to do energy medicine and then I learned this stuff.

I see this pattern of Oh, that's cool.

How cool? Cool enough to devote myself to learning it, and interesting enough to learn it well enough to become proficient at it.

So I recognize that I have these seeds.

If you care to share, anybody? So the rest of us have some good seeds to offer. Yes, Luisa?

Luisa (00:38:35):

I have to say I have also very strong seeds where I get interested and I try for a while and then I just give up in all my dimensions of my life. But I remember with the Dharma it was like that. First I coincidentally saw some video of Geisha Michael in Facebook.

And then I what you just say, this sounds interesting. Then I bought his book, The Diamond Cutter. Then I was so like, wow, this is the explanation to what I have been looking for always. And then I look, maybe he does some live talks or something like that. And then I looked him up and then by a coincidence, he was coming to Europe to Graz, no, to Krems in Austria. I live in Germany and I didn't doubt it twice to just go there and see him live. And then I registered myself for a DCI event. Then since that then I was joining almost all events DCI events that he was doing in Germany. And then I started to go into the ACI direction. So I was kind of going through that interest. There was some drop, I have to say. I got some bad karma ripening regarding these bad things that I saw about him in internet. So I don't know, somehow I get started to doubt and all this stuff. But something has kept me until now to the point that I wake up at 2:00 AM to then I think I overcame lelo in that claim.

Lama Sarahni:

Yes, yes. Good, good, good. Great example, right? Could you see her steps beautifully explained. Anybody else have that you care to share? I know we all have.

Natalia (00:41:11):

I can share two experiences. One is not exactly, maybe not exactly what you want to hear, but when I first learned about neurographica, the drawing that I teach, I just couldn't stop. I started drawing right away. And I dunno, for the one year that I was taking classes, I just couldn't stop. Not just me, but all the other girls, ladies, we were just joking that we are on drugs with neurographic. We couldn't stop.

But the other thing that probably closer to what you're explaining is that when I had to start teaching neurographic, and I knew I wanted to teach it, but it was scary to go and do it and tell people and start teaching to people. And I was thinking, of course, who am I? Who am I to teach? Are they going to understand my accent? What am I going to tell them? Then every time after the class somebody will say, oh, it was wonderful. Oh, I had this insight. Oh, I really like it. And so it kept me going and I found out that I really like being in class and explaining it and teaching it, even though I still have some resistance before each class. I still have some commotions, like doubts. But then once start, the class starts it.

And I hope I can get it in meditation like this.

Lama Sarahni (00:43:25):

Good, good, good, good. So Nati is pointing out that she had the seeds to be instantly at freedom from lelo, right? So into the new project that the four steps just went like dominoes and we're gone. But it's beautiful how you point out that when the time came to shift to teaching it, you needed to go through those four steps. And actually kind of go through those four steps before every class as I do with every class. I think it's good to do that.

Again, what I'm hoping that you'll get out of this is this recognition of the sense of the Aha of these four steps. That they're actual things that become real, realization. Meditation is just one new experience that we have been attracted to for whatever reason. Maybe it's just because the classes say you have to do it. Which isn't a very powerful reason. But once we have a stronger attraction to it, then we'll go through these four stages and we can recognize them because we've had them before.

Okay, Flavia your hand's up.

(no audio for some time because Flavia was in translator channel)

Flavia (00:46:18):

I want to, it's easy to realize when I don't want to because I'm like, I won't go through the four stages, so I better not waste my time. That's all I wanted to share.

Lama Sarahni: That's perfect because that's a very strong intellectual renunciation, using that criteria for how to use our resources in a very intentional way. Flavia has this insight to say, No, it doesn't qualify. So let it go.

Luisa:

Lama. Sorry for the recording because Flavia, she's in the English channel, so this was not recorded in the original channel, what she just said? So maybe if you can summarize what was the question or the comment?

Lama Sarahni (00:47:31):

Okay. Flavia just shared that in her experience, there are many things she's had in her life that she liked, but she knew that what it takes to get good at something and she evaluated those things that she liked, and found that they didn't pass. The benefits are not worth the effort to get good at it. So she used the similar criteria to decide, No, I'm not going to spend my time on that just because I have this little bit of liking for it. When I evaluated it, nah, not where I want to put my energetic resources.

Luisa: What if it's just a fear? Like in that case, I mean I understand what Flavia is saying, you go through in your mind, but it could be your own saboteur that is kind of saying, Don't try, you're going to fail anyways. I don't know.

Lama Sarahni: If we do this honest evaluation and come up with, Oh, this is fear blocking me, it means we're still at the level two, the obstacle two, where we haven't agreed that the benefits are worth the risk. Maybe the fear is strong and valid, but maybe it is a, Oh man, no, I recognize that I'm not going to try because I'll fail. Then we continue to evaluate: Is the benefits of trying despite the fact that I might fail, is it still the benefits worth that? We're not saying all that fear is ridiculous, because it is not. But there are other things that we've done. We still had fear of failure, but we did them anyway.

And so we know that we can, not overcome that fear, but put it enough aside that we try. But it does take evaluation, and maybe the fear is so strong and the humiliation would be so great that it would be valid to say, No, I'm not going to try. Because if we don't get some kind of, I dunno, what's the word? Ability to set that fear on the sidelines enough to try anyway, any amount of trying with that fear still drawing us is going to make us fail. So as Flavia said, Don't waste your energy on that.

Fear of failure is a really, really deep one that many of us have. Many of us. And there are other methods of working with fear of failure. I'll bet Nati's neurographic gets at that. I use tapping myself. Or tapping you can do on yourself, there's another version of it where a practitioner helps you, and guide you through it. That can go maybe deeper than what we can guide ourself. Or you can be guided in your own tapping, there's YouTube videos. There's all kinds of different methods for getting into our neural programming and unplugging a misfit belief and plugging it in someplace else. This ACI program is not the arena for that, but it is out there.

So if we come up against that, any kind of deep belief, emotional belief obstacle that we can't break through on our meditation quest, it is something to explore. Get help with those deep mental afflictions and then try again.

So I'm going to give us 3 minutes to think of your own rejoicing practice in your mind, or you can write it down. I'm not going to ask you to share. But let's do a rejoicing practice on things that you remember that you've learned in life, that you recognize you had to have gone through these four steps, whether you knew it or not. And so just think, oh, there's that one. Your mind will go, yeah, but you tried to play tennis and you never got good at it, so you dropped. Yeah, but… Push the „yeah buts“ away and come back to, oh yeah, that one. I learned to do that one. I learned to speak a new language. I learned… and come up with some strong ones and think, oh, I see I do have those seeds. Yay. Yes, Luisa.

Luisa:

When you say the four steps, is the four antidotes?

Lama Sarahni: Yes. The four antidotes.

Okay, got it? All right. So not in meditation, you don't have to close your eyes, just do whatever you want. Think about life. Three minutes worth.

Monica (00:58:06):

I have a great example. Now I finally understood the exercise.

Lama Sarahni: Ok great. Share.

Monica: I think I ask myself the question. Okay, I'll first tell the example and then the question. So for a while, my husband, he's a, oh, I forgot the word. How do you call people who train very intensely, like high level, something like that? High performance.

So my husband, he's always been a high performance athlete. and for a while he's been trying to make me get into doing functional exercises because he strongly believes on the benefits of functional exercises. And I think that for the longest time I've never liked doing those types of exercises. I think I actually even felt like a repulsion towards them. But now since he recently started his own business a month ago, he just founded a fitness studio. And as me supporting him, I started going to do all of these functional exercises.

And that's exactly, I think what happened. I got curious in a way to try them for the first time in a more serious environment. And now that I've started to see the benefits, or reap the benefits of actually doing those exercises, I'm starting to put in the time and actually I put in my agenda and in my weekly schedule, the days that I have to go and do those exercises. Because now I'm starting to see the benefits of that, of what happens when you do those exercises. And so I ask myself why that happened with meditation, not in the same place with meditation. It's like theoretically I have studying for several years now the benefits of meditation, but I've tried it several times and I haven't got caught up, or hooked is the word, hooked. I am doing right now with this functional exercises?

Lama Sarahni: Wow. Right. Yay. Great. Alright, so what I wanted to point out was that we already have done this. That it comes kind of naturally in certain circumstances. Let's keep that in mind. Let's take our break.

I will pause the recording. Pause, yeah.

(break conversation)

Luisa (01:01:37):

Monica, may I share something with you? Because I had the same situation, and then as I mentioned, I had this kind of Aha. I need to train my body because when you do some physical demanding exercise, you also have to overcome the mind saying, stop is painful. This mind that is telling you to stop. Why are you doing this? Are you crazy? What I have noticed is, I started to run and it's not enjoyable. So I went through the same process. Like your husband, my husband is also very sporty, and then I say, okay, going to start something physically painful that I can train this mind telling me, No, stop, it's painful, whatever. Then I did it with the mind of „I am doing this not because of the sake of…“, I don't know, losing weight or whatsoever, it's more because I want to dedicate that to my meditation that I stopped my mind saying, why are you sitting here like an idiot?

Look, nothing happens. You are just thinking of food or whatever. There are no benefits. And then I started to run. This Tuesday I run 10 K, which is for me, I mean I don't know how many of you run marathons. This is, I am like baby steps, but for me to run 10 K again, I did a long time ago, I was so happy. But, I went through that process in the 10 K. I started to think what the hell I'm doing now? Then I kept running and then like, okay, I'm now super far. If I don't want to do anymore, how can I come back? During the running I'm going through this. And at some point it somehow you just surrender to the process, and then you just kind of keep going. There is you cross the point of no return. And I have experience now in the meditation because I'm also meditating every day that this thought come to my mind.

What are you doing here? Look how many times you have tried to meditate and still nothing happens. And then it kicks in. Luisa, you feel the same when you are running. You feel the same look, the first kilometers are awful. If you are running in winter, you are freezing like hell the first kilometers. But then after three or so, then you warm up and then you just forget about the or you don't feel anymore the cold. And this has kept me also in the meditation kind of what I wanted is „Shut up“ as part of the process surrender, at some point you're going to see the benefits. So maybe you are just starting that part. And then at some point when you do the functional exercise dedicate it to your meditation and say, I'm going to teach this mind to go through the blah blah and keep doing. And at some point we will see the benefits of meditation and then it will be enjoyable. At this moment, it's still not enjoyable. But I guess the exercise, the physical exercise, at least in my case, I can see that I have thought to my mind to go through the pain and keep running and you can apply the same on meditation.

Lama Sarahni : Yeah, great advice. Thank you.

Natalia (01:05:06):

Good. Congratulations and thank you. May I also share something and maybe ask a question? So I did Vipassyana several times, and it's done in a setting where you go and you meditate together with the teacher and it's incredible energy and I feel the support of the teachers in the space. It's much, much easier to do it, to meditate there than by yourself, at least for me. I know Geshe Michael also went to monasteries, and it's probably the same environment. I don't know if it's exactly the same, but there is a support of a teacher. and it's also in those ACI courses. Thank you for you, Lama Sarahni doing these meditations because I did not see, I don't think we have anything like this experiential, which is very, very needed. That's how, because it's so foreign. Like running, you maybe can learn it or doing exercises, you still go to a gym and you work with somebody. You showed up, you said that you went to the gym and there was an environment already.

So doing these meditations by ourselves, it's very, very hard learning it. So the question would be why is it not? Maybe it's not designed to be like this?

Maybe it was designed to do it with Geshe Michael together, those ACI courses?

Lama Sarahni: No. These meditations are designed for us to be self-directed, self guiding. Because even when you're in a group meditation and you like get on the slide with the group energy, nobody but you can really know what's happening in your mind. If you are a meditator that relies on your outer circumstances to reach your level nine meditation, that's not going to carry you to the platform of being able to gain those realizations. We need to be able to turn it on ourselves rather than rely on a certain circumstance for it to happen.

So the circumstance is great for teaching us what it feels like. And then even then the meditation teacher can't get inside your meditation and go, You're in subtle dullness. This is agitation. That's up to you inside there. And if you're in a group and you're meditating really sweetly and nicely, and you're not actually checking—dull agitate, dull, agitate—,then it's a different goodness for a different purpose.

I'm not saying it's not useful, but it's not what this training is about reaching the goal of reaching the platform for turning our minds to the ultimate nature of the object.

Natalia: Okay, thank you.

Joana (01:09:12):

For me, a turning point also was that with the guided meditations, the effect that you just described, Lama Sarahni. They always had a different pace, so I needed some more time on some different thoughts, but they went along or maybe they used some words or some metaphors that triggered something. So I got lost with those thoughts and it always was distracting at some point. And then I was trying to find how do I meditate on my own? How to guide myself, as you say? And for me really helpful was this getting your own personal daily practice. So having this rhythm as you start the class always with the class opening for example. And you always end with the dedication. And then I always know now what I have to do when I'm meditating, how do I start my session, what’s the first part, the second part, and there's this analytical meditation in between, and then I dedicate at the end. So I have this kind of red thread that I can follow, and it's much easier and it makes it much more enjoyable than at the beginning when I remember, What I'm a meditating upon today? And everything was so chaotic. So I never had a kind of plan and I started anew every day and it was annoying. So with this practice, it's now much more structured and much more enjoyable, because I know what I have to do, go somewhere, and then there's the Sheshin, or the Drenpa, dullness, agitation. So it's more fighting anyway, but it's better now.

Tom (01:11:03): Can I also ask something? If we have the time.

Lama Sarahni: Yes.

Tom: Following on what Luisa was sharing, which running 10K by the way, think is incredible. Just the idea that made me want to crawl into bed, did not like running. But I did grow up from age of six being a competitive sailor six days a week, about 10 hours on the water competing, going to the Olympics training. And I can see the progression of learning a skill and all this kind of stuff, and where it developed me.

There was always is even with the struggle, there's always still a sense of joy and which I'm struggling to have for meditation. It's so rare that I'm having joyful or good or insightful meditation, but it's like I don't want to meditate, and I can't remember why I'm meditating. Because half of the time it's not great and it's annoying. And then there is that other part too that I do understand and there is more and more research about doing things that are hard.

It does show mental progression. There is a bunch of research and I think it's wonderful. But I do think that we have an addictive culture to do hard things all the time. And I have that personality. I sometimes sit around and I'm like, I had one time meditation and I got up and I was like, I have the personality of you tell me that I need to make it to China. I will dig through the door with a spoon through the walls. But then I was like, the door is right there. Why am I always choosing the hard thing to do? So I'm also wondering why does it need to be this hard or why do we need to make it this difficult. Or if it is even that difficult or just so full of BS that it's become this difficult because I think life is already difficult. This realm has its own thing. I don't want to add more to it. I don't want to run a 10 K meditation every day.

Lama Sarahni (01:13:40):

Yes, yes, yes. So that actually brings me to the next thing I want to bring up in class. I'm sorry, all that was not recorded, but it wasn't. I'm putting my recording back on now. Okay, so we are back.

(This audio is taken from a local recording of one student so also break was included)

It was pointed out that we have resistances to activities, and then something happens and we decide that we're going to try those activities out anyway, despite the resistances. Sometimes circumstances shift, and the resistance drops away. And we actually experienced some benefit from that behavior that we had resistance to.

Now it's becoming enjoyable and we're seeing the benefits, and maybe we even wonder why we had the resistance at all.

Then it was pointed out that sometimes you're in that situation where you decide, I'm just going to show myself that I can do something hard. And I'm going to dedicate to this other thing I'm perceiving as difficult that I just can't get interested in.

Then it was also pointed out is (that) life is just so darn hard. Why make yourself do something hard? In addition, why do we do that? Why is that necessary?

And it's not necessary from some higher being saying.

And meditation isn't difficult because somebody said it better be difficult or we won't get anywhere, right? You get where I'm going.

Why are we having all these different experiences? Because of our seeds, right?

I mean, the answer is the salute.

Is the hard work—hard work that's unpleasant at first, that then becomes pleasant—is it the hard work that makes the fun later?

No.

Because there are times when we've worked hard at something, and it didn't become fun and we didn't get good at it. Hopefully we dropped it instead of forcing ourselves to continue to do something that we're not good at and that's not fun.

If there are things that we're continuing to force ourselves to do that are not fun and not—what I say—and we're not good at, find some other way to get that result done.

The Buddhist path is not about becoming this stoic, unhappy, rigid person.

We're already good at that.

Yet here's this discipline that we're being taught that has to be done exactly this way It sounds like, I know that's how I've delivered it, but the punchline is none of it's going to work unless we have the karmic imprints for it to work.

So we also know that we have karmic imprints for working hard at some things and them becoming fun. And we probably have the seeds of some things being fun and you don't have to work at it at all.

We have all the combinations of all the different seeds.

The bit of the snag with meditative concentration is that we do have the seeds for meditative concentration, but it turns on and off according to circumstances.

Like we were talking about with Nati.

The meditative single pointed focus tool that we're training in is that being able to turn that hundred percent focus of attention on and off according to our need, not according to outer circumstances.

That's really what we're going for in meditation.

Imagine you have this skill. You just turn on the microscope, put the object like my fear of failure underneath, and you look at it at the 10 x, and you, Okay, I see it clearly.

A 10 x. Oh, I understand it deeper now.

A 1000 x. Ah.

10,000 x, Ah.

Microscopic, Ah.

All the way to its true nature. Ah.

Without that skill of turn on the concentration, use the analysis to penetrate through.

We don't have that ability to dig deep into these principles that ACI is teaching us are the keys that we will use to move us through from suffering human beings to no suffering in our entire world. Make this transformation. It's a transformation of belief system that leads to a transformation of perception.

We can't get deep enough if we have a mind that will get partly deep and then go, eh.

Or partly deep and is too dull and sloppy to get it clear.

Learning the benefits of meditation partly has to do with learning these different principles that the ACI coursework is teaching us about.

Because as we understand those principles more and more clearly, we understand how this marriage of karma and emptiness thing is the explanation for all of our experiences. And we gain this ability to work with our behavior in a more and more fine tuned way to create the imprint for the circumstances of this transformation we want to make.

Our behavior is made outside of meditation of course.

Our shift in belief system, shift in identity, happens in this deep concentrated state.

So that outside of that deep concentrated stuff, we still have sufficient recollection of our morality and awareness of what I'm about to say or do. Eventually even what we're about to think. But mostly the think has already happened, right?

Then our mindfulness says, Oh, ordinary wants to say this. The new me is going to say this instant. Because of this growing ability of recollection on my ethical choices and my awareness of the choice that's about to be made.

We don't really have quite enough information yet to really say, Oh yeah, the benefits of meditation are worth the effort. We don't quite have it yet, have it all from this tradition.

So good for you for trying so far without all the information.

We are overachievers, as Tom says. But that's also why they say just start with five minutes. Start with 10 minutes, and add one minute. Because hopefully after a 10 minute meditation our timer goes off and we're not done yet.

That's all right. Dedicate and stop anyway. Because it grows this mind that says, okay, I want to start where I left off. We get there quicker and we go a little bit further.

Then next week I have a whole nother minute. You know how long those minutes go?

It slowly builds up. Joana's comment that when she finally had a regular system to her practice, it helped a lot.

And I don't know, Joana, maybe we can do another session where you say how that system developed. Because I don't actually see it being handed to you in the ACI coursework. We kind of have to put the pieces together. I had to put the pieces together myself.

So again, at the end of these extra classes, I hope that you'll see a glimpse of your own systematic practice that you want to put together.

I want you to put together your own, because then you'll be more interested in it than if I just assign you one. That's just an authority figure saying, Do this.

And there's nobody in the world that loves doing that.

We will have different options and then you get to choose.

Luisa (01:26:04): It just occurred to me that from the comments and what Tom said, and so, the problem that we have with our seeds, I believe with meditation is that it's too abstract. We cannot see. We cannot see like with the sports, you see the six pack, you see the muscles, you see… There is something there visibly, clear the benefit. With meditation, if you're starting, is too fuzzy. And then my question is maybe what the seeds that we need to plant is to come from this obstruction to something more concrete for us.

Lama Sarahni: Yes. What would you think that would be?

Luisa: I don't know.

Lama Sarahni: What karmic seeds would we need to have to see our efforts in anything be effective at getting good at it?

Luisa: Empowering others to achieve something?

Lama Sarahni: Right. Overcoming the first obstacle, we had been exposed, somebody exposed us to this new thing. My little girls volleyball team went to see the Olympic teams play, and that's what sparked it.

So, how did that get sparked?

10,000 other people went to see that match and they didn't all become volleyball players.

I had the seeds from having shown somebody some activity new to them that they got interested in and got good at.

Do we have any parents in the crowd?

Did you teach your kids how to tie their shoes? Did you show them how to tie their shoes? Did you help them get good at it?

Yes.

Did you teach them how to talk? Oh, did they get pretty good at it? Probably so good, you'd like them to please be quiet for a little while.

Those of us without kids, we still have friends.

Tom, how many people have you taught to sail? Yeah, a lot.

Did we teach anybody how to roller skate? Did we show them what roller skating was all about? And then they became roller skaters too. Gee.

We have seeds for the antidote. First antidote to lelo towards anything actually.

So if you want a specific practice to help us get over lelo, you would do some rejoicing on, Yeah, I introduced that one to this and they went on to get good about it.

Yeah, you introduced 10 other people and they didn't go on to get good about it, but we don't care about those seeds right now.

We care about the ones that worked to plant the seeds for what we want to get to ripen. It doesn't have to be about meditating at all. It's about anything new that sparked their interest.

So Joana, you've had your hand up for a while.

Joana (01:30:43):

When you asked us to think about the things that we learned, I just recognized that actually I have learned many things in my life, but it was more a rational decision. It wasn't this kind of intrinsic, I want to learn that. There were a few things, but it was more this kind of enjoying the learning new things. And no matter what you would give me, I would just try to learn and get good at it.

But the difference for me in meditation was really to get to know people who were strong enough a living example to show me what's possible when you get this sharp mind, and when you're suddenly taking on whatever comes from life to you that you're just taking it and yeah, well, okay, so let's take that.

There was this kind of pressure all the time. And then of course I tried to get rid of it, and then I got angry a lot if I couldn't hold it. And there were people showing me how it would be completely different. And it was so interesting to me that I really tried to, with this fun of getting to know new things anyway, and then with the strong enough example to really stick to it. And I just recognized also that since I enjoy learning new things so much, I always try to make other people having fun when they learn things. So this is kind of interesting loop that I just caught on.

Lama Sarahni: Yay. Good. And so all of that can be dedicated to, Ah, let's dedicate this to my meditation practice getting fun and deep. It's not like when you take one thing and you dedicate it to something, you can't use it again for something else. That's the fun thing about dedicating and rejoicing. There's no expiration date and there's no limit.

Technically your dedications don't have to have anything to do one with the other.

But it is helpful to be more, get the correlation. It seems to be a little more effective.

So now, the other seeds for overcoming obstacle number 1, the way we can increase the strength of seeds that those seeds that we already have is, when we become aware of someone who's really good at something to be happy for their success.

And it's very human nature to be a little bit jealous of that success, even if it's something we have no interest of doing ourselves. But it's like, Wow, a really great triathlete. Do you know there's this little „Could I do that? I don't think I could do that.“ Right? Comparison instead of an instant, Wow.

So in life, as we go through our day and we see someone who's dressed really beautifully in your opinion, just mentally, Wow.

Like rejoice in that success.

Somebody who's good at something? Rejoice in that success.

In order to get successful they probably had to work hard at it. They're working hard. Probably had to get fun. They probably had to overcome you know, they must have done the four to overcome their lelo.

By rejoicing in their success adds to our own success.

Then you can say, I'm rejoicing in their success so that I can experience what I call success in my meditation practice—if you want to be specific.

So now there's another way. Yes, Rachana.

Rachana (01:35:52): I don't know your other way. Maybe it covers it. But I was going to mention, because Luisa says, if I understood correctly, you said that one of the difficulties with meditation is the not a measurable result that you see immediately. So you're just kind of doing it without this. But maybe we could, when we're just walking around feeling peaceful at a time when we would've normally felt angry, been like, Oh, so cool. That's a result of my meditation and assign a result that we can do afterwards kind of a thing when we're not at meditation.

Lama Sarahni (01:36:27): Right, right. That's really a great point. Because in our meditation at the moment we're planting seeds.

Do we really expect to get a great meditation from those seeds 10 minutes later?

No.

Okay, I started meditating six months ago. I've been planting seeds 10 minutes a day for six months. How come I'm not ripening seeds for realizations?

It's like we see, it's kind of absurd. We're judging our effort on the result. And that would be like my girls' volleyball team judging their effort on the result that they got, which was to lose every single game we played for the whole first year.

If we had said our success depends upon winning a game, we would've all quit.

But we didn't. We played all summer as well, and came back stronger.

Our habit is this constant judge of ourselves, and yet I said, keep track of how your progress is going.

But the keeping track, Geshela would say, All you have to do is keep track. You don't actually have to assess your tracking.

In his corporate world, he would be given the task to improve the, I don't know the words, but the quality, to have fewer rings made that had to be thrown out instead of sold. He asked all his supervisors and his workers to just check off. Good one, good one, bad one, good one, bad one. But they never took the information and sat down with the people and said, you have to make fewer bad rings.

They just had them keep track. And their proficiency and efficiency increased without ever having to do anything different apparently.

Because the tracking increased, the attention increased the result somehow.

It's hard for us who are used to judging ourselves and others all day long—to give up that habit.

And one of the benefits of learning to meditate deeply is you can get in there and be aware of when it's arising so that when it does arise, you can go, there's that—give it a name, Bob. Again, I'm not interested in what you have to say Bob.

And mentally turn on something else.

So it can, hopefully meditation will become fun. Because of the results you see off your cushion. Thank you Rachana.

(01:40:22):

We have these seeds. We already have seeds for having somehow helped others overcome their lelo state of mind towards something new that they have wanted or needed to learn.

Recognizing that we have the seeds, it helps our state of mind going into meditation, not like, Oh, I'm learning something completely new. I know we have a sense that we don't have any familiarity with it. But we do have the seeds necessary. The trick now is to get them to ripen. That is a trick.

So when we do our meditation preliminaries, those are designed for us to be adding to the seeds that we need to move us along our five paths.

They're all built in those seven preliminaries.

So in a way, if that's all we did, knowing how to use them, that's all we would need to do. It's like a recurring theme in this ACI tradition, is you hear a practice in the Lamas will say, And this practice is all you need. Then they teach you 20,000 more of them. And everyone goes, This is all you need.

And it's really true. But we learn all the others because the nuances help us with the one that we're really attracted to.

So it may very well be that you'll meditate in this way and then in this way and on this topic, and it all is just like, eh. But then you meet one of the practices and it's like, oh, that's the one. And then as Joana says, you've got to structure and et cetera.

So in our meditation preliminaries, the first one we call forth that being who for us is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom.

It means they know everything that we need to do to change, and they actually see it in us already. They're omniscient beings. They see our emptiness. They see our pure being. They see ourselves seeing ourselves the way that we do—kind of embarrassing—and they love us anyway. Their love means they want nothing but our happiness, ordinary and ultimate, and they'll do and be everything they need to to help us get there. Even if we fight and scratch and spit on them trying to avoid it, they are still there.

So this being, from our side, is a ripening of our seeds.

We are told that they had to have been not fully enlightened and then gotten fully enlightened in order to be the fully enlightened being who is omniscient.

You can't just be omniscient. You have to create the seeds for it.

That means they've done all these meditations, they've made all the mistakes, they overcame all their mental afflictions.

They did the necessary in their own lives to become that being who we are seeing as this being who's there to guide us. Which is why in this tradition they encourage us to be very specific about that being. That's a long story.

So here's this being.

When we say, Oh, think of one of their good qualities and honor them and inspire to them. We can do that very specifically.

Whoa. They must have been and are still an accomplished meditator.

They have single pointed, focused, perceiving emptiness directly all the time.

They had to have trained, they had to have overcome all those obstacles.

They had to have done the work.

And wow, I so admire you for your meditative expertise.

Why not have that be the thing or one of the things that you hear yourself admiring them about?

You're planting seeds when you hear your mental talk say to them, Wow, you are an amazing meditator.

Those are seeds we want.

Then the next one, we make them an offering.

Again, the scripture says, make them these beautiful offerings.

Make them the offering of something that you did that they taught you.

Why not offer them: I actually focused my mind on my breath for 30 seconds. Here.

Then they go, Wow, you are fabulous. I love you so much.

Seriously, you want to imagine that reaction to them.

We're only imagining it because we maybe can't actually see them yet in our mind's eye. But imagine that response because that's what they're doing.

Whatever puny little effort you made, or big one, tell them. Make that your offering in order for us to see our meditation practice get better and better.

What comes next?

(01:47:58)

Confession.

I know you know this already, but in my last six months of meditation, I never once got to level four. But I kept trying.

I regret that I interrupted others' concentration.

I regret that I distracted people who were trying to concentrate.

I regret that I had that argument with so-and-so because it disturbed their mind and I know that it's going to disturb mine in the future.

I really want those seeds out of me. So I'm telling you about 'em.

Any obstacles to your meditation practice.

You choose your confession in order to impact your meditation career—for a while.

You see? Very specifically.

Distracting others, interrupting others, disturbing others' minds, making noise like unnecessary noise? Because isn't noise a big one that interferes with meditation?

Somehow putting people's bodies in uncomfortable positions. I don't know. You squeeze 'em in the back of your car and don't care whether they have a pillow or not. I don't know. There are circumstances we can't help it. But we can be more attentive. Are you comfortable?

Think of your own examples of things that distract you from meditation and how is it that I'm adding to those seeds of destruction?

Maybe it's dullness. I know I've delivered some ACI classes that have added to my mental dullness in meditation. Because they're just dry as toast, and I see these faces that are just like, it's like doggone. So I try to regret.

Do we bore people? That leads to mental dullness and meditation. Really.

So use your confession effectively, and then we imply the antidote: Studying, thinking about emptiness is the uber antidote. But you can say, my antidote to a lousy meditation is just doing this one.

So I'm on my cushion till my timer goes off, and that's my antidote to all this stuff that I confess. It feels like a pretty puny little antidote, but it'll be effective as long as we make our power of restraint.

I promise not to bore people at that meeting tomorrow. And then be sure you don't. Which maybe all you do is just keep your lip zipped. You can't bore people if you don't say anything. If you meeting's going on. But you get what I mean. Give yourself a power of restraint. Because when you keep the power of restraint, your antidote kicks in and your regret damages those seeds.

(01:52:14):

Then you do rejoicing.

You can rejoice in ways that you introduce somebody to something and they got really good at it. You can rejoice in ways that you were going to interrupt somebody and you didn't.

You can freewheel on that and then what's the end?

Please stay. Please teach me. Thank you for your guidance.

Please keep helping me. Please stay close and then dedicate and dedicate the goodness that I've done just so far to experiencing progress in my meditation so that it becomes fun. So that it can help me be a kinder person outside of meditation, so that I can help other people learn to be kinder people by example.

Your preliminaries are best made, very personalized. Using that sequence, but within them, personalized and very specific to the change you're working on.

Which right now we're focusing on meditation. So it can be that.

All right, so any questions about all that? I mean, I'm sure there's lots. Yes, Monica.

Monica (01:53:56):

So just one question. By the way this is amazing. I'm really in awe. Thank you so much. So typically on the preliminaries, we do the confession of our bad seeds. But then you just mentioned that we should also do the restraining where we promise. Where does that go exactly then? Is it after confessing?

Lama Sarahni: Yes. So when you do your confession, there's actually four parts to the confession. It's called the four powers.

So in the confession, first you mentally state the situation that you're wanting to confess. The thing that planted the seed that you want to rip out. You actually mentally review it. Don't get caught up in the story. Just say, My boss blamed me for such and such and I didn't do that, and I yelled back and I regret it. Just that simple.

They already know the details.

But then the four powers are:

This is what I did.
Here's why I regret it. We want to feel that regret. I know I planted a seed that's going to come back to me as being blamed again, someone getting angry with me, somebody…, all the different aspects of our reaction that we're anticipating will give us a bad result. I really, really regret it. We want to feel that the seed is in me and I want it out. Regret, not shame, not guilt.
Then we establish an antidote, a makeup activity. Which out of meditation would be do the opposite to others. But on our meditation cushion, there's a series of antidote activities that we can do. We'll learn them later. But you establish something as your makeup. As I said in this session, because we're working on our meditation skills, we say, I'm going to establish as my antidote, just this effort at doing meditation today. We could do other things, but that was my example.
Then the fourth one is establishing the power of restraint. I'm going to not do this in such and such a situation the next time it comes up. Very specific, something we'll remember. But then we need to do. Because if we establish a power of restraint and then not do it, now we have something new to purify because we lied to ourselves. So very specific. Don't say, I will never get angry at my boss again. Because that's not possible to do. Something specific.

So the four powers come in your confession and then comes rejoicing.

Thanks for asking. I was assuming stuff. Any other comments? Something you need?

Siau-Cheng (01:57:45):

Yes. Thank you for the teaching. I think these are very practical. Thank you so much. I never thought that a 7 limb preliminary can be linked to the meditation itself. Always separate them. But the kind of thought that I go through during this preliminary can be quite complex in the sense that we have to think about the antidote all these things. Should we do a premeditation before actually doing the meditation in the sense that let me plan everything first before I go into the seven preliminary? Or should we just do it on the spot? Is there any difference in doing this?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. That's a good question.

I am remembering when I first started my meditation career, I did kind of have to think about all the different things I wanted to work on and have them kind of prearranged. But then, once my system developed, then I didn't need to rely on that so much because it would sort of come up organically. What was on my mind the day before is what I work with in that preliminaries.

The meditations that I do now are sort of, I can't know how to describe.

So yes, it will become more organic, but until then do preplan. You'll feel more effective if you have it preplanned. Yeah, good question.

Yes, Tom?

Tom (01:59:40):

How can we develop a teacher or a holy being to come to our preliminaries? Because again, nothing or no or no visual or I don't see anything. I'm in a period right now in the past few months that I don't see anything physically. So it's like nothing coming up visually or it will shift to be random, or I have the Dalai Lama.

Lama Sarahni: Right. You had asked that at the beginning of ACI and I never got back to it. Thank you for bringing it up again.

It's eight o'clock. I want to go ahead and answer Tom's question, but if anyone needs to leave, you are welcome to sign off. Just please do our usual dedication next thing after you sign off. Then of course you're welcome to stay.

Some people have the seeds to instantly think of someone with this really deep, heartfelt devotion. When they hear someone say, Think of this being who's perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom.

For some people what pops into mind is Mother Mary, or Jesus. For others it might be Mohamed. If they have a connection with a religious figure that has suited them and they have the seeds to feel that devotion.

Yet somehow they find themselves in this tradition that argues a little bit with those beings. But not in the sense that they don't exist. Just in the sense of whether they could be creators of the world. So let's just leave that aside.

What I'm trying to talk about is: Some people have seeds for devotion. Some people don't have seeds for devotion. I was one of them. I didn't relate to anybody or anything.

Once I met this tradition and they're saying, Oh, Shakyamuni Buddha, amazing being. It still was like, I don't get it.

It took a significant period of learning what makes a being be a Buddha, what we mean by Buddha, not Shakyamuni Buddha, but what makes a being that. Before I really caught on to, Oh my gosh, there are beings that I can't see that have transformed their own identity into being manifestations of love, compassion, and wisdom.

Once I got a hold of that, I was looking for them in a human form.

I had friends who would look at Geshe Michael and go, oh my gosh, a Buddha.

I admit, I don't, that's not my reaction.

Extraordinary, amazing, beyond words, but human. And that's my error, right? Because he's not either one from his own side.

Do I have devotion to Geshe Michael? Absolutely.

Because of all that he's taught me, that's changed me, changed my world, and given me what I have to share with others. That's the biggest power for me and empowered me to do that.

So for some in this tradition, when I say, Think of that being, he's who pops up for others in our tradition, it‘s Lama Christie. For others it's his holiness the Dalai Lama. For others, it's their Aunt Helen.

For some they even say it's my cat. And when we understand the empty nature of that being who is a manifestation of love, compassion and wisdom, what they look like—either to our physical eyes or to our mental eyes—is not as important as what we feel like in their presence.

That being that we're calling to us can be a being who's not embodied and not a mythical, it can be totally this ideal of what it would be to be made of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom. Just feel that they are with us.

We don't have to see it. I'm not a visualizer. I don't get mental pictures.

But I rarely clearly get a knowing that what I'm thinking is happening, what I'm establishing to be happening is happening. Even though I can't confirm it with my mental sense powers. I don't know if that's good or bad. It works.

So it is worth thinking through our world, our current world.

Is there anyone who really does seem to embody this extraordinary love, this extraordinary compassion, this extraordinary wisdom?

If I can find one that I have a picture of, or I've ever been in the presence of, so we can confirm it from being in their presence, that could be the one that you call for.

You may say, they don't know me from Adam. I've been in the room with them with 1200 other people. And it's like, no, no. If you have this sense, then they do know you. And when you think of them, they are instantly knowing you, and loving you. And they are not there physically. Maybe they're not even there visually, but their love, their compassion, their wisdom is there.

Then maybe there's nobody in our current world, but there was somebody from the past that we so admire.

You could use them.

Maybe it's a mythical being. You could use them.

What we want is the sense that we are actually interacting with this love, compassion, wisdom in the course of our preliminaries, and that we have this sense of them pouring something into us as we're doing our meditation.

We're not physically setting it up, but they're there with us as we meditate.

That goodness of them helps us.

So don't be in a hurry to pick a certain picture or a certain being.

But get this idea of a idealization of what it is to be perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom.

Then see what comes when you call for that to be with you.

It may be random beings that show up. It may be that.

More likely it's going to maybe be random for a while and then somebody will be the one that keeps showing up.

But the important piece is to keep this clear sense that what's showing up is the love, the compassion, the wisdom. Not the what they look like in physical form. That's not really them—whether it's Geshe Michael or his holiness or your cat.

Tom: That person then not necessarily has to be the heart teacher that you go to and ask for the teachings in the physical world?

Lama Sarahni: Does not have to be, no.

Tiom: I mean the cat is a bit limited.

Lama Sarahni: Right. Does seem a bit limited. They aren't really. Yes. Good. So keep exploring please. Thank you for asking.

[Usual closing]

Okay. Thank you for the opportunity.

Extra Class 3: Clarity & Intensity

18 February 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Extra Class 3

Welcome back. We are extra credit meditation course studiers, February 18 2024. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Usual opening]

(8:40)

So someone asked where the outline of the Lam Rim is, in what reading. I can't find it. So I'll keep looking. I know I've seen it. I know I have it. I know you do too. Because it's somewhere in the ACI stuff. But I'm not ignoring you. I just can't find it.

Then someone else asked with the water bowl offerings leftovers.

If it's too much for our house plants. What else can we do with it?

We can put it on our pets bowl. They can drink it.

We can put it in an outside bird bath.

We can drink it, and you can put it in a local stream or pond or ocean.

We don't want to just throw it away. We want to use it for something specific is best.

If you don't have any other thing to do with it, take it outside and pour it at the base of a tree.

Natalia: Can I use it in a humidifier?

Lama Sarahni: Well, if you're using distilled water you could use it in a humidifier, yes. Yeah, that'd be nice.

It's it's considered leftover blessed substance. It's sacred. But it doesn't mean it can't be used. You just don't want to go, Ah, this is useless, and throw it down the sewer. Unless you want to bless your city sewer with it.

Then someone asked, if we want to do the mandala—and I and I'm assuming that they mean that a 37 pile mandala with the rice and the whole thing—where would that happen in a given meditation session?

That 37 pile mandala practice can be its own separate session.

If we want to do it as part of our daily practice, you would include it at the place in your preliminaries, is where you're making your offerings.

We usually think of our preliminaries as happening behind closed eyes in a mental state. But it's just fine to call forth the teacher, make them the 37 pile offering.

You could then hold it for the whole time that you're doing your confession, your rejoicing, asking them to stay and asking them to bless you. And at the end of that will pop it in your lap. Or at the end of the offering, you can pop it in your lap.

Then just leave it there for the rest of your session. Because you don't want to distract yourself by putting it all away.

So you can use that 37 pile mandala as a requesting something. We our offerings are given in request of help. And you can use it as a Thanksgiving offering. So the other time you could use it would be when you're all done with your meditation session, you could end with a 37 pile mandala. Thank you, please stay close. So grateful to you.

Then you dump it the other way.

Then someone also asked, how do we raise our Bodhichitta?

At the beginning, when we first sat down and we're calling forth the lama, a nice way is to start in the same way that I generally start class.

Call them forth. See them there, enjoy them there, and then hear them say, Think about somebody you know who is hurting. That one person represents all suffering in the world. And you feel that feeling, I'd really like to help them. I could help them by taking them a meal. I could help them by babysitting for them. I could help them…

All these different worldly ways that does help.

And we remember: But they just go on to get sick again. They just go on to get hungry again. They just go on to need more babysitting.

Not that that's bad, but we understand—given karma and emptiness—that we could help them stop their distress forever. Teach them how to do it.

So we grow that wish to also be able to help them in that deep end ultimate way.

And that's our sense of really, really wanting to do my practice for the day with this strong motivation to become the one who can help them in that deep and ultimate way.

You could use that or your own version of that to lead yourself into the offering and the refuge as we do. Then we admire them, think of their goodness, aspire to become like them. Make them offerings.

Make a confession. Do the four powers, is our confession.

Fill ourselves with rejoicing. Ask them to stay, ask them to continue to guide us and teach us, and dedicate. Just that much goodness to seeing that person get free of that worldly problem, that specific problem, and seeing them awaken. They represent all sentient beings so that will get us started with growing our open heart.

Okay, yes Rachana.

Rachana: If I can do a little bit of a shameless and vague plug for anybody who does not know the 37 power mandala offering. Vika and I are going to hope to start like an annual three seven power mandala offering festival. We don't know what it's gonna look like. We haven't had, we'll have time to think about it in the beginning of April. In the beginning of April we’ll start planning it, but just to plant the seeds in your mind that if you'd like to learn it, and take part in the festival, mid April we'll be sending out some sort of something.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, I can't wait to see how that unfolds. Rice flying everywhere.

(18:15)

Last class we were exploring this ability to recognize being off the object and then bringing ourselves back to it. So that that recognition of off-the-object can kick in sooner and sooner. We're training our aspect of mind called drenpa. You can think of it as a little purple spot over here somewhere. And here's the rest of your brain multicolored and this purple spot, its job is to park you on your object of focus, your object of focus. You decide: This is my object. Purple spot you hold me on it.

Or give it a name, or I don't know. Get creative. So that you get this sense that it's a quality of your mind that you can turn on and off.

Eventually, you don't ever want to turn it off. Because you haven't focused on your moral discipline. You don't ever want to unfocus on that. Because the instant we do, Ooh nuts. We make a, we say something stupid, or we do something not so nice.

But that takes time, to feel comfortable with that. Don't turn it on, full on like that until it really is what you want. Because otherwise you'll get neurotic, and rigid, and icky to be around. That's not the point. Yes, Luisa.

Luisa: I have a question about that in the first class, when you did that exercise. Not last class but of class before, the first extra class when you did the exercise of focusing on the breath, and then identify you mentioned three things, the breath feeling, the concentrating, and then I forget what was the other thing. But you mentioned at the beginning there is the watcher, and there is the me. Or maybe I misunderstood, and this is the question that I have. For me, I cannot identify the watcher. For me the watcher is me. Like my brain or me my mind is the one observing. Am I mistaken? Maybe because I don't have the ability to yet. But I cannot kind of divide. When you say look at the watcher, I'm like but I am the watcher. Who is the watcher here?

Lama Sarahni: Right. That is the starting point, which is why we're exploring it. When we're learning to hold our focus on the object and have another state of mind that alerts us to the quality of our attention on the object, we're recognizing that that thing I call me is multi dimensional. It feels like one hole, substantial Me.

We're training it to include these different aspects of being. I don't know how to describe it quite.

You're not wrong. You're not mistaken. It will come with time to have this sense of yes, there's the Uber me. And then there's the watcher, and there's the recollector. There's the „-er“. You'll go on to identify different „-ers“ inside there.

Some you want and some you don't.

The one we're trying to actually train, there's two are trying to train.

One is that one we are calling drenpa—the recollection.

At first, it feels like here's the watcher-me on breath.

Then I realized that watcher-me has been watching my story about the meeting coming up. Then it's watcher-me that goes, Oh, whoops. Let's come back to breath.

It feels like the whole watcher is doing that.

As we try to catch the mind off, sooner and sooner within the story that quality of mind that's paying attention to the me on the object becomes this watcher that isn't watching carefully enough to prevent us from jumping off the object yet.

But then catches it and we come swinging back.

It's less than less the full me having lost the object.

When we're getting quicker to bring it back, we have still fully lost the object. But you'll start to feel this—I don't know how to say—more to your mind than me and other. I can only say it will come with time.

Again, that's the reason why I was asking you to actually let your mind jump off so that you have to catch it. So that you can recognize what it feels like to catch being off and you can feel what part of you brings it back.

You'll see. That it'll change from all of me to some part of me.

Then, eventually, that part of our awareness that is the aspect of holding us on our object becomes constant in our meditation.

When that happens, we've reached the level 4 meditation. Because we're now on the object without any risk of losing it completely, as we were in levels 1, 2 and 3.

So by the time our quality of drenpa is full on, that's what it is to overcome obstacle number 2: Forgetting the object. You can't forget the object when our recollection of the object is 100%.

Once we get there, then we have a different job to do.

A different thing to train, an additional thing to train. Okay, yes, Tom.

(27:50)

Tom: Doesn't the idea of the seer, applied in the same way that we do the pen and it's emptiness. How can I sharpen that idea then, in the meditation?

Lama Sarahni: When we get to the quality of meditation, that we can fix ourselves on our object and do a careful analytical meditation about investigating the true nature of me. That's when we will investigate the empty nature of my body, the empty nature of my feelings, the empty nature of my discriminating between things, the empty nature of all those other factors that make me up and the empty nature of my own consciousness, and the empty nature of all existing things. That's your career path. We need drenpa and sheshin to be able to do that effectively. But we don't wait until we have drenpa and sheshin before we do that. But we do need to learn the way to do the analysis so it's coming.

How did your efforts go at catching the off the object?

Luisa: I can catch myself getting off the object all the time.

Lama Sarahni: I know. It's crazy hard, isn't it?

Luisa: Yeah. And it's very often right.

Lama Sarahni: It doesn't seem to matter how much you pull it back, and how much you tether it. In the moment, whip. Because it's not that effort in the moment that brings the next result, does it?

Luisa: That's what we want.

Lama Sarahni: Right. Don't expect that for a long time in my experience. Yes, Flavia.

Flavia: I don't know that I noticed more in my meditation, but I did notice it more in my awaken time. Like I was more aware when I wasn't focused on what I was supposed to be focused on. Like my mind is just going to whatever thought. I was like, You're supposed to be listening? Yeah, so I was able to see it in that. In meditation, I don't know.

Lama Sarahni: Again, our tendency in learning meditation is to just try really hard and try to get to the platform level 4. Just trying really hard isn't sufficient. So it really is worth that takes some time in any given meditation, to intentionally work with our drenpa—our recollection:

Catch and return. Good job.

Catch and return. Good job. Okay. Enough. Let's go on to the review meditation.

And during the review meditation what happens?

Source of all my good is my kind Lord, my Lama,… lunch.

Catch and return. Go again.

If you want to be really strict with yourself, you would say, I'm not going to go to the second verse until I can say the first verse without distraction. But you'll get frustrated.

So, catch and return, catch and return. Go on to the second one.

Catch and return, catch and return go on. So that your review meditation doesn't take up your whole session.

But we can see that our review and our analytical meditation will just be planting seeds until we have this ability to really penetrate our focus into that analysis. So our effort in simply a fixation section is useful.

(33:40)

At the end of last class, was it? That we started thinking karmically.

How can I karmically grow the ability for my catch and return to be more effective?

How can I karmically grow the ability to stay on my object?

What do we do that karmically makes our mind jump off the object?

Interrupt, distract. Even, if you have the habit of clumping around the house, and there's somebody else in the house, instead of tiptoeing quietly, I mean gently. To what extent do we allow ourselves to distract, disturb, interfere, interrupt the minds of others?

We have to in human life. Iek, stop. There's something dangerous. Don't not do that.

But somebody's talking. You see the hummingbird. You'd like to show them the hummingbird. Of course we go, Look the hummingbird, in the middle of their sentence. And it's like wow, cool. I got to see the hummingbird.

But an instant quick regret would be useful there. Because we also just made the seeds for our mind when we're doing our meditation, iek, off to something else.

It's really not about willpower and self discipline on our cushion.

It's about that self discipline off our cushion to avoid interfering.

How do we help calm the minds of others?

In your daily life, do you get opportunities to speak kindly, to speak gently, to be a calm one in the face of a bit of chaos. Those are opportunities to help grow the seeds for our own still like state of mind.

Suppose our ability to set our mind on an object of meditation has grown so strong that once we put our mind on the object it will stay there until the timer goes off, or until we say I'm going off the object. But it's under our control. Once we reach that, we've reached that level called level 4 meditation.

What was the name of it? Put the mind on the object closely, something like that.

It means we won't lose it completely anymore. Our that needing to check and pull it back isn't happening anymore. The holding it is full.

Now we'll be on the object for a long enough period of time that our task is to recognize: Is the quality of my mind on this object bright and clear and engaged and intense or not? Or too much of that?

We're at the place where the problems of meditation that will be arising are dullness and agitation.

Now that does not mean that we don't have dullness and agitation in levels 1, 2 and 3, right? Like I can have dullness and agitation both at the same time. And that's why drenpa can‘t kick in. I'm either too dull, sleepy. Or too (agitated) that drenpa can't get through that to hold me on my object. It's that there is no real need to check and adjust for dullness and agitation until we're on the object long enough to deal with those two on the levels that they're becoming obstacles.

We've overcome them enough in our first four antidotes to laziness.

If we didn't overcome our laziness to some extent, our dullness would keep us from sitting down to meditate. I'm too sleepy. I'm going back to bed. I do that after a 5am, 5-7 class I go back to bed. I don't sit down to meditate very often. Because I know I can't.

So overcoming our laziness means at least we've gotten over the hump of the obstacle of dullness and agitation from keeping us trying to reach level 4, which is the point at which we start to address them directly.

To be able to address them directly we need to be able to recognize them.

Just like we needed to be able to recognize the being off the object and then recognize the going off the object, and then recognize the wanting to go off the object until it's like nah, I don't even want to go off it anymore.

We want to recognize agitation, beginning agitation, wanting to agitate.

Same with dullness: being dull, getting dull, even wanting to get dull and have this ability to adjust adjust, adjust, adjust, adjust.

When we're at that automatic adjusting between the two we're at level 7.

So from level 4, 5, 6 is this effort to recognize and learn to adjust between agitation and dullness.

The scripture seems to imply that once we reach fixation, dullness will be the first problem that arises. I suspect it's gonna be a personal experience, whether it's dullness or agitation. But the corrections that we make, the processes the same.

The scripture says, Once you realize you have fixation, then we start that process of from time to time check. What you're checking for is clarity, intensity, agitation.

Clarity and intensity are the two kinds of dullness.

If we have clarity, but not intensity, we have subtle dullness.

If we have the object, but no intensity and no clarity, we have gross dullness.

We're still on the object. So it's not that we're so sleepy I can't keep my head up. That's pre no clarity. We're not talking about that. That's sleepiness, gross dullness, subtle dullness.

Now the clarity and the intensity that qualify our mind to be free of dullness is a state of mind that has a tendency to get too tight.

That too tight quality of mind pushes us into agitation. Not off the object, but into this quality on the object that feels nervous or frazzled, or too much.

When we recognize that, our task is to loosen it up. Let ourselves slide back. Hopefully we slide back to the clarity and intensity. But the tendency is to lose the intensity and slide back to clarity. And we think, Oh good. I've let loose my agitation. I'm back where I belong. But then we check in it's like oh no, I don't have the intensity. Let me tighten it up a little bit.

Remember the Buddha hearing the music lesson going by in the boat?

You need to tune the lute strings just right. Too tight, they break, too loose they won't make music.

This same idea with our mind on the object without losing it. And now the quality of our attention on the object.

We want this clarity with intensity, without agitation quality of our mind on the object in order to be able to hold that clarity and intensity on the object as we investigate the true nature of the object.

Is it there the way I think?

If so, wouldn't it be the same for everybody?

Does anybody experience it the same as I do? Mh, I think so, but it can't be.

So what is its true nature? Ah.

Fixate on the „ah“, beyond words.

Without the ability to the mind‘s pendulum to reach that place where we can hold it, our analysis gets distracted, it gets agitated, it gets too dull to penetrate it until we'll still do it. But we won‘t reach a deep Aha until we do our analysis from this mind that is on the object, clear, intense and agitation free. So what I'd like to see if I can help you do is get a glimpse of these different qualities of mind just by by analogy by the feeling in a story that I'm telling you.

Then if you can get a sense of it when you're in your own meditation on your own object, maybe you'll be able to go, oh, I feel it now what she was talking about. Then you can be adjusting for yourself.

Any questions, comments so far?

It's really hard to understand what I'm trying to say until you've experienced it.

Sorry about that.

(49:28)

Geshe Michael says, Meditate for 10 minutes and add a minute until you're meditating for an hour. And he keeps saying you got to do an hour. You got to do an hour. Most overachievers will say yeah, yeah, the 10 minute - 1 minute idea is great, but I'm gonna start at 30 minutes.

What happens is, we're doing pretty well for the first 5 minutes or 10 minutes, and then we lose it. We just keep trying. We just keep trying to pull it back.

We keep trying to adjust. We just keep trying because the timer hasn't gone off yet.

The problem with that is the harder we try the more agitated we get. The tireder we get, so that when we actually do loosen up from agitation, we slide into dullness more readily, because we're getting tired. We still just tried to say no, no stay until the timer goes off.

The Sakya tradition says, Meditate deeply intensively for short periods of time, multiple times. They would say, if you find that you're able to really stay intensely focused for 3 minutes, then do 3 minutes. Stop, shift and wiggle, do another 3 minutes. Stop, shift and wiggle, do another 3 minutes.

It doesn't seem like we'll ever get to fixation in that way because every 3 minutes you kick yourself out. Actually that's where I ended up, was my mind would kick me out at 2 minutes and 59 seconds, and it's like wait, that wasn't my task.

So one would need to do 3 minutes, then 5 minutes, then 2 minutes, then… right to catch yourself on the object clear and tense aware. Come out. Pat yourself on the back. Let's try it again.

Like what, intensity training in running, right? Do your best for a short period of time. Rest. Isn't that like the orange zone or something in exercise?

You can do this similar with meditation, says a different tradition than ours. Somewhere in between you explore, find what works the best. But recognize if we push ourselves, we don't get any better any faster.

Slow and steady wins the race. I've said that before I think. So the 10 minutes with 1 minute added is probably good advice. Maybe even start over alright

Let's see if we can explore dullness and agitation experientially. It's almost break time. Let's take a break before we start this

(54:40)

Natalia: May I ask you about what we spoke before the class? You said that I need to work more. So I was thinking is it what do you mean but by working more? Is it can I overcoming with tapping maybe. Or going to a psychologist?

Lama Sarahni: No. Try tapping first. You know how to do it right? Do that even though I'm deathly afraid of dying. I totally and completely accept and love that. I know what to do. And see what happens. What I meant by work with it was, get your priorities straight and your karmic correlations clear, and your behavior that perpetuates mental afflictions. Adjust it, and that's how we change our fear of death attitude to: It's not a problem.

Natalia: Sometimes it's not a problem. It's not constantly a problem. There are periods where I forget about it, I get distracted, right? There are periods when it's intense, and it's really smashing. And there are periods when I know that it's gonna be okay. So it's not constant. But especially when I focus and I do practices on those it gets very intense.

Lama Sarahni: Try the tapping, all that you can. Get to the depths of it. It's not just fear of death, there is something else under there.

Natalia: The more, when I started learning ACI courses, I feel like I have this program that my life is short, whatever teaching started, it's short, it's gonna end and there is something I need to do. And that's what's been from the very, like my first memory and that's what perpetuates over and over and over again. So it's not that I've been in a deadly situation, it's not that something really had happened. There's no event that I consciously remember.

Tom: Can I ask what you said to tell you before the class started, another way to tell, like I did not like to not disrespect your fear of death or anything like that. But I had this mind of like, you didn't know that like our cell dies like every second. We technically die all the time. I was like, that's fine. My hair falls out all the time. I technically die all the time. But you, Lama Sarahni, you said something about Why Geshela didn't want to teach about death, or like what happened after death. I don't know if I have it correctly. Because the reoccurrence of the reincarnation process or did I miss something?

Lama Sarahni: No no. The focus was on the transformation and to entertain that we needed seeds just to stop death or to deal with death are contradictory to the belief that transformation can happen before my seeds for this life run out.

Tom: I feel like I hear a lot in the classes that, I‘m forgetting the word, like when we come back or reincarnate, then we're not, we're most likely not going to achieve enlightenment like in this life.

Lama Sarahni: Well, that's what the Diamond Way is all about, just nixed that belief. For Diamond Way that belief needs to be completely that we are in this life. And that's why he refused to let us be prepared for dying just in case. He didn't want us to…

Tom: I need to get enlightened like yesterday. No way. I'm like, coming back. I need to be like them like last week. That's like that's the goal here.

Lama Sarahni: Exactly. So don't even entertain dying, because you're going to reach enlightenment before it happens. So you don't need to know anything about it, was his point.

Tom: Oh, no, I didn't understand that. Okay, now understand better.

…or like it even in this body. I can tell you exactly when a day in time either in the middle, I am a little too ecstatic with the pen today. It's very poor feeling in me like big multiple stages in my life that like died. And I've shifted so there is a sense of like, yeah, scared, right? Oh, well, don‘t get me wrong, I‘m not saying that, like I hope to die in a car accident during pay. And like that is definitely not what I want to or hoping but it's like nothing gonna hurt me because I came out of the other side multiple times already. But want to do it better to get fully enlightened. So I'm not repeating. Okay, that makes more sense now.

Lama Sarahni: Getting there, getting there.

Natalia: The people that came to your classes, and then left in the middle. Why do you think they left? They get a break?

Lama Sarahni: Seeds, right? I don't have the seeds for them to be in class the whole time. I'm so sorry. Worldly reasons. And that's fine. Thank goodness for recordings. I'm turning mine back on. Right now.

(62:10)

Remember that agitation is happening while we are still focused on the object. It's different than being off the object, that‘s distraction.

Dullness is happening while we are focused on the object. Subtle dullness, we are bright and alert on the object. But we're not intense. Subtle dullness.

Gross dullness, we have the object. But we're not bright and alert. And so we for sure are not intense. But we also are not agitated. Dull.

Dull is sort of a state of focus that we rely upon when we have something that we're working on, like writing an email. You're focused on it, you know what you have to say, there's no conflict about it. You're just writing it. And you're not keenly focussed, intent, making sure every word is just right. You're just writing it. Technically that's gross dullness, and it‘s effective.

But it's not effective for meditative ability to penetrate through to the ultimate nature of something.

Recall that these qualities of clarity and intensity and even agitation, they are qualities of our own awareness, our own mind. They're not qualities of the image that we have in front of us.

Let me try some different examples. We're not experimenting yet, but just some ideas.

Suppose there's a program on your TV set. That's something you really are not interested in, Baseball for me. The baseball is playing. I'm aware of it. But I have no real interest in it. I could be sitting there watching the baseball, I'd be fixated on it, and just that disinterested. That'd be a dullness state of mind.

Now suppose I change the channel, and I put on a YouTube of somebody explaining how to repot a pathos plant. I like replanting plants. I like Pathoses. I know how to replant a Paphos plant. But maybe this person has some interesting new ideas, some new tips. I am more interested in this program than I was in baseball.

The quality of my mind brightens up and I'm going to pay closer attention to the person's explanation about repotting the plant because of my interest.

But I already know, so I don't have that intensity. I just have the clarity.

I'm paying closer attention than to the dumb baseball game.

Then suppose on that YouTube, that lady finishes that explanation, and then, oh my gosh, it's Geshe Michael and he's giving a talk about how to see emptiness directly. And he says, I'm gonna give you a clue.

What happens to my mind?

Yeah, Claire just showed it. Whoa!

From baseball game, to pathos repotting, to Geshela talking about to see emptiness. Do you feel it? Can you feel it in your own mind?

So it's not the picture that's any different.

The quality of my mind came up because of the content of the object. That is true.

What we're trying to train our ability in is to be able to adjust the quality of our mind regardless of the object.

See? We have the ability to do this. If the object triggers that, we believe the object triggers it and we want to overcome that belief that my quality of mind depends on the object.

Rather, that quality of my mind depends on my decision to turn it on and turn it off.

In which case, if I had that ability, I could have that baseball game on and go from nah to oh, to whoa.

We hear the stories about Ken Rinpoche watching baseball. He learned how to speak English listening to the announcers. He learned all the secret signs of the umpire to the pitcher. He thought it was the coolest thing to interpret what they were saying to each other by way of the hand signals, which each team had their own, because it's supposed to be secret. He just saw that as such a match to what he was teaching his students that he was like single pointed focus with clarity and intensity on baseball games. Because he could with his mind.

Then he saw things in that baseball game that other people don't. Same idea.

We want to be able to turn on the clarity and intensity in order to penetrate through to see things that we can't otherwise see. Whether it's karmic consequences, or it's the real reason why the boss keeps yelling at me. These are the kinds of things that our meditation will reveal to us when we have that quality of mind that can penetrate through it, to get this Aha that we can't really get to with our rational thinking.

Now, suppose we've got the program, Geshe Michael explaining and we're bright and alert. And his explanation is getting more and more complicated. We're trying so hard to follow it, and at some point, it like gets beyond our capacity. Our mind either goes to thinking about something or it shuts down and gets dull.

It does happen. Even when we have some amount of control, it will still happen from time to time. Then our skill of recognizing, adjusting, we just apply it again and again and again.

Okay, let's see where I am in my notes here.

Experiment to explore different qualities of attention

(72:53)

Let's explore different qualities of attention and our ability to turn them on and off once we recognize them. But we're going to use an imagined scenario to trigger them so that we can explore them. But as I say, eventually we're learning to not need the quality of the object to trigger them. We can do it or we can turn it on ourselves. Okay, so you can do this with your eyes open, your eyes closed, it doesn't matter.

Imagine you are walking along a forest path that you are familiar with and you enjoy.

Think of the state of mind that you had have, the quality of attention necessary to stay on the path.

You're familiar with it. It's enjoyable.

You know you can't walk on it with your eyes closed and stay on it. You have to pay a certain amount of attention to stay on the path. But you're so familiar with it, that that quality of attention is a bit in the background. It's there.

You don't need much effort of attention to stay on the path.

Now start again. Imagine you're walking along a forest path that you're not familiar with.

You're not quite sure when it turns, what comes next, what are the hills?

Are there logs in the way?

Feel how your quality of attention needs to be keener in this experience of walking along a forest path you're not familiar with.

You're still enjoying it, but you're applying some effort to stay on that path.

Now go back to the familiar path and feel how your quality of attention loosens.

And then the unfamiliar path.

Can you feel the difference?

Go back to the familiar path with a state of mind up the unfamiliar path.

Let the familiar path state of mind come back again.

Then step on the unfamiliar path with that state of mind.

What happened?

Go back to the unfamiliar path with the unfamiliar path state of mind. More alert.

Now the unfamiliar path. You come to a place where the path narrows down, and there are muddy puddles on either side of it.

Feel the increased quality of attention necessary to stay on the path and out of the mud.

Now in this state of mind where you're carefully, intently, staying out of the mud, moving along the path.

If an airplane goes overhead, are you likely to look up at it?

Does it register in your consciousness, sound airplane? Probably.

Are you interested in it? No. You need to stay on the path to stay out of the mud, so you're not distracted by that sound, that image.

There is some awareness of it but it doesn't kick you out.

Your mind is bright and clear and with that intensity.

Now go back to the feeling of being on the familiar path no mud.

Feel your mind loosen.

It kind of feels preferable, doesn't it? Ah.

But for penetrating to the ultimate natures of things. The state of mind won't do it.

Step onto the unfamiliar path. The clarity comes back.

You're on the narrow muddy part. The intensity comes back.

Okay, drop all of that.

Now, on another day you've told your friend you're going walking on this new path. New to you. And the friend says, Oh, I hiked that path yesterday and you know what, I lost my bracelet somewhere along the way. Will you watch for it?

So now, we have the new path level of clarity, and now we have this additional state of mind that's on high alert, watching for our friend’s bracelet.

We know that as we're walking along, if we lose that looking for the bracelet quality of mind, we could easily miss it. And we want to be able to help them in that way.

So now this level of intensity feels more positive than the level of intensity keeping us out of the mud.

We're more eager to keep that tight focus on the unfamiliar path, and it feels good. We feel like fully involved in our hike.

And we find the friend’s bracelet. Why not? And then they're so happy that we did.

So take away the quality of mind looking for the bracelet.

Take away the quality of mind new path, I'm not quite sure where it goes, what comes next.

Take away the quality of mind that's on the path at all.

No drenpa means you're wandering off through the field. You've lost the past path completely.

Get back on the path. Walking along the path.

What's the quality of mind?

Familiar path state of mind, tighten it up.

Unfamiliar state of mind, good.

Let's increase, add the intensity looking for the bracelet quality of mind as I continue to walk along the path.

Drop back to familiar path, just walking on it.

Tune it up looking for the bracelet.

Lose looking for the bracelet quality of mind, on the path, bright and clear but without the intensity. cCan you recognize it?

Okay, good. Dedicate just that little experiment to be able to fine tune your concentration on anything in this way, according to your need, not the object.

So come out of that and talk to me about it if you like.

What did you notice?

Can you describe it? See how hard it is?

(87:48)

Natalia: When you said, Lost the path, I was like what?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, we were all on it for that whole time, right? Yay. That's a rejoice of all thanks for pointing that out. Sorry to interrupt you.

What else?

Natalia: It was very interesting actually to have this ideas good correlation to what to expect and what to look for in the meditation and very, very helpful. What came to mind is that to be interested in, what we talked about, to find the reason why we're meditating, to find this motivation and now I know why. Thank you.

So if we do have interest in our meditation object, all of this is easier. Again, we want to grow the ability that it doesn't matter whether we have interest or not. We can turn these on and sustain them. Imagine what your mind would be like.

I mean, maybe your minds are like that already. I'm the only one, it's not.

How effective would we be at work? Like crazy, right?

Yeah, I only need to work half time because I can get two days worth of work done in an hour. Like, how do you think Geshe Michael does what he does?

He's looking through a microscope without distraction. I imagine he forgets to eat and sleep.

They need to work halftime because I can get two days worth of work done in an hour. Like Wait, how do you think as you're Michael does what he does? He's looking through a microscope, you know? without distraction, I imagine he forgets to eat and sleep

Flavia: Do you think this is something that could be beneficial to practice this all day? Or is it like too much?

Lama Sarahni: Right. The way it correlates off cushion is that first we work with the quality of drenpa staying on our object. So that, in our off cushion time, when we decide, here's an object of focus that I want or need to stay on, I can do it. Maybe it's making a batch of cookies, and I want to make sure that I don't get distracted and add cinnamon when I was supposed to add vanilla instead. I need to really focus because chaos is going on around me. I need to be able to turn that on.

More importantly, the drenpa recollection that we are wanting off our cushion, is this recollection of ‚my behavior now creates my future‘.

We want our recollection of our ethical way of life. But we need to get there through understanding what we mean by recollection of our morality. Recollection that there isn't anything that I can experience that my own past deeds didn't create. Which means there isn't anything I can experience that won't come from my behavior now.

I want my drenpe to have that so full on that I am focused on what I'm planting, what I'm planting, what I'm planting. So that I will only plant seeds that will be good for everybody in the future. A Mahayanist farmer is planting seeds for everybody's future. The drenpa we're trying to cultivate off cushion isn't just drenpa on how delicious the chocolate bar is. But drenpa on behavior choice making moment by moment.

Then the sheshin quality of mind, when it's full on, meaning we've reached level 9, and the pleasures that come from focused attention, then the quality of clarity and intensity, I want to suggest that those will become our normal state of mind.

And our me will be this bright, clear, intense focus, effortlessly and pleasurably.

But I think to try to sustain that off cushion before we've reached it on cushion, it will burn out our channels, and we'll get sick. Because we would be forcing ourselves into this intense type state. It's not going to serve the purpose.

Get the sheshin in meditation. Drenpa too. Drenpa will more easily carry over into off cushion time. Then that goodness will help our sheshin quality grow on our cushion time. And then it'll grow outside.

Anything else about clarity and intensity?

They really are meaning gross and subtle dullness.

They don't really apply to agitation. In that you can't have too much clarity, and that's agitation.

Too much intensity will push you into agitation.

When we have agitation and we loosen up, too much loosening up, and we'll go all the way to losing clarity. Which means of course, we've lost intensity.

Experiment to explore agitation

So let's explore agitation. Shall we?

(96:45)

It confused me for a long time, that Geshe Michael would say, agitation is thinking about lunch, and dullness is being sleepy. It's like thinking about lunch and being sleepy, you're not even on your object.

But then he's even, I've heard him say, once you're at level 4 and above, and you get agitation, you're thinking about lunch. It's like, wait.

As I was trying to, how do I explain this from my own experience, part of my confusion, I realized, is that as a not visualizer, for me to be on my object, I'm knowing it. I'm holding it in mind.

Then, to be thinking about lunch, which I'm not also visualizing, I'm holding it in mind. I have to be completely off my object to think about lunch.

But, if we're visualizing the object in our mind's eye, I realize I can be staring at a tree and still looking at the tree and thinking about lunch.

I still have the tree object. But I'm thinking about lunch.

So I realized that for visualization practice, you can have your object in your mind's eye, and you really can be thinking about lunch. And still be fixated on the object technically, because the object has not disappeared.

Distraction, losing the object would be, blink, the mind's eye image disappears.

That's losing the object.

Now, there's gross agitation, and there's subtle agitation.

You have your visualized picture. It doesn't go away.

But you recognize when you check in, I'm not really paying attention to it. It's there in front of me. But I've been thinking about that meeting.

My visualization didn't go off on the meeting. But my quality of attention went to this other stuff.

As I was thinking, I was still focused on my object, because there it is.

So sheshin has to kick in and say, Hey honey, check.

Then we need to check: Was I clear and intense on my object?

No, it was there. I was on it. But doggone it, I was planning lunch.

Let it go.

Come back to the object.

Just like drenpa. Let it go. Let the agitation go, loosen up. Come back to that clear, alert, intense on the object.

Gross agitation is like this quality of the image is still there, but I really am thinking about this other thing.

More subtle agitation is, I've got the object in front of me, and like I'm really looking at its details, wondering about it, maybe even telling myself a story about it. Like I'm clear. I'm intense on it. But it's like Dee Dee Dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee dee dee. Subtle agitation. It's not really so subtle.

But the thing is, it's about the object, all this thinking about the object.

When we notice it, we go, I don't need all of that. We loosen up. But if we loosen too much, we lose the intensity.

We were probably thinking that the intensity was that checking it all out. But that wasn't intensity. That was agitation. Intensity is like looking for the bracelet but not getting like this looking for the bracelet.

If the bracelet dropped, it didn't go under a rock. You don't have to pull up the rocks to look for it. You just have to keep focused on the path and it's going to show up. Like that, for the two agitations.

See what my example was.

Okay, so yeah, let's try this on for size.

Oh, Tom. Yes sir. Yes, ma'am.

(104:00)

Tom: Can we say that, like to me when you speak about the focus and agitation comes to mind, the idea of like holding sand in your hand. If we hold too tightly, a lot will fall out. If we hold too loosely, a lot will fall as well.

If we're faux, if we're letting go of the whole hand or the shaking, or that starts happening, we forget about the sand. Or if you look so tightly into every thing of sand that are individual, grain of sand, then you're also so focused in that, that maybe you can trip or like.

Lama Sarahni: Yes. Good, good analogy, if someone lives by the beach.

Tom: And then, I thought it was interesting. First of all, was interesting, the path practice that we did, because I was literally driving from my parents, a few hours before. It was like a path that I know. But it's pouring rain. It's gray and foggy today. So I had to be like, extra focused. But then it was about two hour drive. So I was like, this is a long ass drive, like I'm gonna kind of like… So I was practicing my sanskrit mantras, but it was still like trying to stay focused on the road.

But still, I could tell my mind was shifting. When you were saying to be on the path, I was a little tired from the long drive. But I could feel my spine like my nerves way shifting when I was in the path that I didn't know, the forest that I didn't know. Like I was driving, almost like that same tightness that there is an alertness, but I couldn't be so focused, because it's two hours drive. You have to like stretch. So I was really feeling it in my back when I was like shifting from the path of, oh, I notice it felt like a little more late. I don't want to say happiness. But there I kind of felt like I stepped on a twig. I almost like jumped, like physically. Yeah, that was very clear.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, great. Good ideas.

(106:50)

So let's see if we can get a similar sense of being on the object but with agitation. It's still hard for me.

Here is what I thought would be our different scenarios.

When we, when we focus on our holy being at the beginning of class. They represent for us a being who is made of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom. They are there for you specifically. They know you. They love you. They want to help you. Whether you can see them there or not, they are there. And their love and compassion is shining onto you.

Bring them to your mind's eye, and keep your inner gaze on them.

At first, it's really easy.

Then it's human nature, karmic seeds, for us to get a little impatient. Or our mind goes, What's coming next?

They're not saying or doing anything. They're just gazing at us with love.

And before too long, we're still in their presence. But we're thinking about, What I'm gonna do after class?

Can you feel a difference in the quality of mind that‘s gazing at them single pointedly, and still aware of them there, but with the background noise of, When this is over I'm gonna go do the dishes.

Then recognize that background noise and say, I don't need that.

Back to the Holy Being.

Attention to the object.

We stay there for a while keenly, but nothing seems to happen.

Maybe we lose a little bit of interest.

The intensity slips away.

We catch it.

We tighten up. Oh, my holy being, their love, their compassion, their wisdom.

We try to hold the intensity. But our quality of intention wanes because nothing's happening. It doesn't seem like anything's happening.

Come back to that Holy Being before you, just the object.

Add a sense of that, they're there. They're gonna do or say something.

That increases the on the object clarity, maybe even some intensity.

As you're holding that intensity, what are they going to say? What are they going to do?

I don't want to miss a minute of it.

Intentionally tighten up, maybe they're gonna wink at me.

Maybe their smile is going to change.

Maybe that diamond in their tooth is going to sparkle.

Maybe they're going to give me a secret sign.

Our intensity goes into agitation.

Recognize the agitation and just loosen up. Let it go.

Come back to that pleasurable, clear and intense awareness of their love for you.

Not needing anything more. So happy to be here with them.

Check, where is your mind right now?

Clarity? Intensity? Agitation?

Make the adjustment.

Check again.

Now hear them say, Good job.

You learned something that you will use sooner or later to help them, that other being in that deep and ultimate way. That's amazing. Please be happy with yourself.

You think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. You tell them of your gratitude and your reliance upon them, and you offer them this gemstone of goodness.

See them accept it, and bless it, and they carry it with them right back into your heart.

See them there. Feel them there, that love, that compassion and that wisdom.

It feels so good. We want to keep it forever, and so we know to share it:

By the power of the goodness that we've just done, may all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom, and thus gain that you ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make.

Use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person, to share with everyone you love, to share with every being you've ever heard of or seen, or ever seen you in any lifetime since forever.

See them all filled with happiness, filled with wisdom, filled with drenpa and sheshin. And may be so.

Okay, good job.

Please explore these ideas and see what you can feel in your own meditations.

Extra Class 4: Exploring Different Qualities of Attention

22 February 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Extra Class 4

Welcome back. This is February 22, 2024. We are the learning to meditate group.

Let's gather our minds here as we usually do please.

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Usual opening]

(7:54)

We've been going through the detailS of these terms and ideas about what meditative concentration is, and what it needs to be like, in order to reach that platform, where we can have experiences that after we're finished with them we will recognize as realizations of something. Meaning an experience that makes a concept or an experience real for us.

The the most crucial one in our tradition is to make real the absence of self nature of ourselves and of others.

To be able to experience that our ability to focus single pointedly on an object needs to be under our control, instead of a reaction to our interest in the object, or our attraction to the object.

Most of us don't have the capacity to turn that single pointed focus on and off according to our need.

Many of us can turn it on when we need it. But then, can't keep it there, unless it's related somehow to the quality of the object keeping us focused.

If at work, you‘re handed a project.

You've got to read this material and figure out from it, what you need to do for the project. Because that project, like your very job depends upon, we do have the ability to go like, this is really important. I am going to focus my attention, and we will focus and we will probably stay there pretty strongly. Because the circumstances are such says, I must do that.

But there's still that component of: Because the circumstance increases the power of the need, I can turn it on.

Can we turn that same level of intent focus on something that is unimportant?

Like why would we?

But we want the skill to be able to turn it on according to our decision, not according to the circumstance necessary.

That ability gives us the ability to turn it on and keep it on, even when the thing we've got under the microscope of the mind, maybe is getting scary. Or getting uncomfortable, penetrating deeper, deeper into some misbeliefs we have, and still be able to zero in.

So we're learning the skills to make our concentration be a tool that we can pull out of our bag when we need it, and put it back in when we're done.

The skills that we grow to get that mind as a tool, are the skills of recollection and the sheshin, the awareness. That those are tools that we actually don't put away, and only pull out when we need them. They grow into this habitual drenpa—recollection of something, and sheshin—watcher, awaring, checking, particularly on art behavior choices.

One of the benefits of learning this skill of turning on our meditative concentration on and off, is we grow these two states of mind that actually benefit us all day long, off cushion.

Because it gives us that power of choice making, that without that our choice making is at the whim of our reaction to the circumstance.

So similar kind of idea.

Choosing what to say back to the boss when they're yelling. We don't usually have that mental stability to say, I want to say this, but the result of this is gonna be that eventually. If I say this, everybody's gonna think I'm nuts, but karmically this one's gonna be better.

Which one do I want to do?

To be able to hold that while the boss is still yelling, and then make this and intentionally chosen response.

It becomes a side effect of your effort on your cushion.

We can train them off the cushion. They would fall over into the on cushion.

We can train them on the cushion. And that falls over into off the cushion.

Actually, the effort of training them on the cushion is more direct. Because in our off cushion life, life is going by too fast to be able to train our recollection, and to train our recall our watchfulness.

But when we're on our meditation cushion, that's what we're doing.

We can see how they are going to merge into a full life's practice. As we get used to applying ourselves to these efforts.

Eventually, your meditation sessions will… Let me go back.

At the beginning, we have this meditation session, and it's supposed to be on this object, and we're supposed to come to a better understanding of the object.

But at the end of the session, it really feels like all we've done is focus on making the corrections, the adjustments, the drenpa, the sheshin, action

It's like the object itself seems secondary.

But that's just like when you first learn to play the piano, you have to do scales, scales, and scales and more scales. It's the same idea.

Once we have recognized: I have the skill of recognizing my drenpa and bringing it back. Or I've even reached the point where when I turn my mind onto the object, my drenpa comes on full on, and now I can work with my dullness and agitation.

Eventually, we get to the place where we're actually working with our meditation object, rather than all the correcting. Because the correcting all becomes automatic.

That happens at level 7.

So at level 7, we're actually finding: Wow, I feel like I'm actually meditating now. Instead of learning how to meditate.

But it's not that we've wasted time at all.

Which is again, why we use a powerful karmic object, for the part of our meditation section where we're actually doing our scales.

We're still gathering the goodness of working to hold our mind on an object of virtue. It grows more goodness seeds than holding our mind on an ordinary object.

(18:15)

All right, so we had spoken about dullness, subtle and gross, and agitation, gross and subtle. As this skills that we are working with, as once we've reached the ability to be on the object fully, meaning for the whole time level 4, and working with these adjusting between too tight and too loose on our object.

When our recollection, drenpa is full on, that's to be at level 4 meditation. Placing the mind closely on the object.

Then we're on the object long enough that we can recognize how bright and alert, or how nervous, agitated, is the quality of my attention on the object.

We're checking and adjusting.

Then it over us, we check again. Oops, too much. Back again. Let it go for a while check again. Oh.

Soon we check and it's like, oh, it’s just right. Great. Leave it.

Check again. Oops. Lost the intensity. Fix it.

The 4 Pliancies (SHIN JANG)

In Brian Pearson‘s samadhi sunrise class, he gave a five week course twice a week.

He explained that this swinging between dullness and agitation, it can happen in any given meditation session.

And/or we'll find that, oh, I've finally gotten to the point where when I get my mind on the object, I adjust it for clarity, I adjust it for intensity. I don't slide back into gross dullness. I recognize the intensity gets too tight, and when I loosen it up, it comes right back to where I wanted it.

Then it tightens up and right we recognize Oh, like this is getting easier, or more prompt more automatic. We may have a whole week where it's like, wow, I'm at level 6. No sooner do you say that to yourself, and life throws us a curveball. And oh my gosh, I can't even get to level 4 anymore.

Not to worry.

Just go back to the skills we were applying. When we were at level 3.

The seeds will like re-ripen more swiftly. It‘s just like training for anything else.

We have good days and bad days. We have gooder periods and lesser periods.

If our overcoming lelo still holds us, we will give up when we have a string of lousy meditations. We'll just recognize, this is burning off interferences. No big deal. I'll keep at it. The tides going to turn.

Keep applying our skills.

During this course of time, when our meditative platform is swinging between levels 5, 6 and 7. It's during this time that these things called the practiced eases come on. He uses the term pliancy.

Pliancy means that ease with which we do something that we're very very familiar with.

There are 4 pliancies or 4 eases that will come on as our ability to focus the mind with less and less effort grows.

When we had the definition of shamatha and Vipassana, there was a term ‚the exceptional bliss of practiced ease‘.

When we have those exceptional bliss of practice eases happening because of our single pointed focus on the object. That's when we have reached this quality of mine called shamatha or shiney in Tibetan. Which from that we can reach the platform from which when we turn our mind to the no self nature of our object, we will be more likely to be able to sustain the Aha, that comes from that.

It doesn't mean the instant you reach that platform, you go into the direct perception.

It means that you've reached the quality of attention with such ease and pleasure, that when we intellectually think of the emptiness of our object, we'll be able to hold it more clearly, and penetrate into the direct experience of the emptiness of the object.

It doesn't mean it will happen right away.

But when we're at the platform that it can happen, with this sense of ease full pleasure at that platform, the common obstacle that kicks us out of that perception will be overridden by the pleasure that the mind is feeling at that level of concentration.

The SHIN JANGs that are necessary to be able to sustain that direct perception of emptiness. Like the practice ease

Flavia: Sorry, did you say sheshin?

Lama Sarahni: SHIN JANG, it's the term for practiced ease. The SHIN JANGs quality helps us stay in the penetration into the no self nature.

What are those SHIN JANGs, there's 4 of them.

They come like one builds on the other. You can get one and reach that often, and not go to the next for a while.

You can reach one and it automatically brings on two.

But, it depends on our seeds of course, and it depends on are repeating, repeating, repeating what we do to get there.

Somewhere in levels 5, 6, 7, these pliancies will start to come on. They may come on briefly and then go away, even in within a single session.

Over time they come on and stay on for longer and longer and then they just stay on. So the first one that will show up is called a mental pliancy.

1. Mental Pliancy (Mental Practiced Ease)

They describe it as this feeling of happiness.

Doing this adjusting and staying, just reaching a point where you're working with your meditative concentration on the object, loosening, tightening, and the quality of the experience becomes: Wow, this is so fun.

Instead of: I don't have it right. I don't have it right.

But it's like all right. Nice.

Mental, not in the words. Because that would be a distraction, right?

But a quality of the mind on the object making these adjustments has included in it enjoyment, mental enjoyment, happy, happiness.

That happy state contributes to the concentration. Something that we are enjoying doing, we will do more of it.

2. Physical Pliancy (Physical Practiced Ease)

Over time, that happy mental state will be joined by a physical pliancy, meaning this pleasant feeling in the physical body.

But it's curious because this pleasant feeling is the feeling of absence of discomfort, absence of physical effort.

This sense of ease, that is different than the mental happiness. It is a physical ease. But it's not that your mind pops off the object and goes, Wow, my body feels so good.

It's added to the experience, is this like that the tension that was keeping us upright is just gone. It's pleasurable.

Brian said this sense comes over you of, Man, I could just stay here forever. You have this mental ease, this physical ease, ah, just leave me here.

But you could see it could become distracting. Because if our focus on our object we dislike we would have to decide, I'm going to recognize my ease, and park my mind on that. It would be tempting, because mental happiness and physical ease is a really attractive object.

Maybe more attractive, you know, than our Holy Being before us. Or eventually, our analytical analysis of that Holy Being before.

It's tempting, it would be tempting.

We have a Bodhisattva vow that says, you know, I will avoid letting the pleasure of meditation become my focus of meditation. And we think, Well, how can I ever do that? Meditation is not that pleasurable?

Well, when it gets that way, we might be tempted.

And so Buddha's saying just that, we could spend a lot of time there, and it wouldn't bring us to our goal.

All right.

Brian was describing this feeling at levels 5, 6, 7, especially at level 7, that if you had to describe it at that point, he said, You might describe it as being the experience of the meditation, as opposed to the experience experienced me meditating on that.

The focus of attention of me doing this, sort of slides more into the doing this happening.

It's not that your sense of self disappears. It's not that you merge with your object.

It's that you're so completely immersed in the meditating experience, the concentrating happening, that you have no interest, no awareness of other stuff going on.

You'll have your own words for describing when you find that shift from me trying to meditate to this experiencing still with the clear object.

But from that comes these two next two pliancies that are called the bliss of practiced ease. And there's a physical one, and there's a mental one.

3. Physical Bliss

So the first pliancy, first comes the mental happiness, and then the physical ease.

As we stay in that space—getting more and more absorbed is the term they use—, the bliss of the physical pliancy comes on. Meaning this ease of body becomes a heightened pleasure.

It's an uplift of energy.

It's happening in the subtle body.

But it's not as subtle sensation in the sense of, Was that it?

It might be short lived. So it might be Oh, was that it were to go.

But it's very clear that there's this subtle physical sensation of Wow.

It's the bliss, the physical bliss of practiced ease.

4. Mental Bliss

Then that leads to the mental bliss of practiced ease.

When the physical law comes on the heat, the minds already done it. Whoa.

You can see how again, how easy it would be to focus our attention on that, because it's extraordinary.

But if we do focus our mind on that, guess what.

We've lost the object.

It won't necessarily kick us out of the appliances, but it has definitely kicked us out of the object. We're focused on these pliancies that are planting the seeds for those higher rebirths that we don't want.

We want the pliancies but we don't want them to be a distraction.

We rather use that heightened sensation to allow us to ride our experience more keenly on to the object, so that we can then remove itself nature, and be just as heightened-ly aware of its absent nature, as we were of its presence nature. Which we have to know what we mean by that before we can turn that on.

It's not that we're picking this object, I'm reaching my fixation.

When the pliancies come on, I quickly go to the emptiness of the object. We don't do that, until those appliances are stable enough that they are sustained when we intentionally shift our meditation object from its appearing nature to its empty nature. It's not just remove it and nothing's there. There's a process we go through that we actually haven't learned yet.

Spoiler alert: at the Heart Sutra retreat in Spain, we're going to learn one way of doing it. But we're going to learn it in classes too. So not too worried.

So I imagine that we have all had some experiences in life, where we've had glimpses, actually, of something similar to these 4 pliancies. I can think of two in my life, three actually. The most, the one I can explain the best was back in my running days. I would do three miles a day with my dog. When we first started out, it was uphill. So not only were my muscles stiff, and my fibromyalgia screaming, we were going uphill, and I hated every step. But by the time I got to the top of that hill, and I was warmed up, and my body was lubricated, it was feeling better. My dog was having a good time.

By the time I got halfway around, many times, it got so pleasurable. Like it was a beautiful day. I knew I was burning calories. I'm having a good time. And by the time I get around to like the last half mile, I'm home before I even recognize that I did the last half mile. The runner's high, the zone, when you reach that zone, where it's just like, you're not asleep, you're not somewhere else, you're very present. But it's just like you're loading or something, it feels so great. It's like you could just keep going forever, right Sheila? Until the last five miles.

But we reached the zone. It really is a subtle body thing. It really is a biochemical thing. It really is a thing that we can't reach by saying, I'm going to get to the zone.

The circumstances seem to need to be just right.

But if we've ever experienced it, we can remember Oh, that's what that was like.

Oh, it came through in stages. It didn't just turn on, came in stages.

Where did I see it in other places in my life?

Now I do a line dancing lesson once a week. When you're first learning, it's a new series of steps, takes really hard concentration to put them together, and then you put them together and concentrate really, really hard to get it. As long as I'm concentrating, I can do it. But the minute my mind gets distracted, oh, I lose it.

Then some days, just the music starts and I'm all stumbly, and then something happens and I’m doing it.

It doesn't matter whether, I mean I'm not looking around, I'm focused. But it doesn't take that, Oh what comes next. What am I doing?

It's just like, Ah, that feels nice to just be able to do it.

I just want to ask you to think about your own experiences. You're welcome to share if you like, but you don't have to. Those of us who hear don't go Oh, I've never done that.

The point is, we all have this capacity, and we've probably already done it.

The advantage of that is thinking back. Wow, that didn't feel good. Well, I must have had some amount of concentration going on. That I brought those on.

That'd be cool if the same kind of thing could happen through my meditation training. That came on because of some kind of training that I did. Yeah, maybe those seeds could ripen for my meditation progress. Why not? Okay.

So think of your own, but then also think of someone you know. Someone who's who learned something new, got pretty good at it, and maybe has told you, there are some days when I'm doing my workout where all of a sudden it's just like I'm floating, and it's so easy, and it feels so good.

We have a rejoicable there. Somebody who has the practiced ease.

If you know them as a meditator all the better. Use them as your rejoicable to help our own seeds grow into the results that we are aspiring to reach.

Make sense? Anybody care to share though so that everybody can have some rejoicables? Don't feel obligated.

Natalia: I can share. We were hiking in high mountains. It was like six hours we needed to walk in. By the time we were climbing up, it was already four hours passed and at every stop I was feeling that I could not continue. Then at some point, something switched in. The last two hours I was just running ahead. I wasn't physically running. But it was so easy. And later, the other people shared they didn't know what happened and how to keep up with me. It was night and day, just so different experience.

Lama Sarahni: Nice. Yes. Same kind of idea. With the SHIN JANGS, that something comes over us, and we can penetrate even more deeply.

Flavia: For me cooking.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, Tell us how it feels.

Flavia: I don‘t have to think about it. I don‘t have to do anything. It just comes.

It’s easy.

Lama Sarahni: Easy and pleasurable. Nice. Like it's so easy.

(Short connection loss)

Flavia: But it wasn‘t like that the first 2 weeks. At all. I suffered so much. I thought like I cannot do this. I am gonna quit. I even quit and my boss was like, Nah, I don‘t accept your quitting.

Lama Sarahni: Smart boss.

Yeah. So same with meditation. It's not going to come in the first two weeks, necessarily. Maybe it does. Didn't for me?

Rachana: It just popped into my head that when I was doing yoga, which I hope to get back into, there's a move where you lift yourself on your arms and you're like, slide your feet from the back through to the front without them touching the floor. And man, months and months and months I tried. And one day they just went through without me actually trying, and I was like, wow, and my husband was next to me and he was like, Whoa. And I didn't know how I did it. It was so cool.

Lama Sarahni: Nice. Yeah, that's a good sweet glimpse.

So what I thought to do, is walk us through the 9 levels, using the example of watching a movie or something. I want to say on a TV set but nobody watches TV sets anymore, they watch, whatever you're going to watch.

I just use another example to help us fine tune our understanding of what these different levels, qualities of mind are at the different levels.

I don't really I don't want it to be like I'm guiding you in a meditation because we're using a program on your TV screen as our meditation object. That doesn't qualify, but it's just that we can relate I think to the quality of our attention on something on our screen.

Before I do let's take a break and get refreshed.

(Break) 51:28

Experiment to explore different qualities of attention on an object

Let's explore qualities of attention on an object that we're already familiar with, so that we can better recognize them when we're sitting in meditation.

Suppose you've got your channel changer in your hand, and you turn on the TV set. You're just flipping through the channels.

You finally settle on one and you leave that program going, but you're doing something else you're in you're doing dishes.

The TV's on. You can see it. But you're doing dishes.

You've established your meditation object, your the TV set is on.

But come on, you're doing dishes.

You look up, back to doing the dishes, you look up.

You're more on doing the dishes than paying attention to the TV program.

That's level 1.

Pre Level 1 was flipping through the channels you didn't even have an object.

So level 1, it's on doing dishes.

SEM JOKPA.

The meditation part are the few moments you're actually looking at the program.

Then, GYUNDU JOKPA, place the mind on the object with continuity.

Let‘s say we're done doing the dishes and we'd go sit in front of the program.

The kids are running around, and there's traffic outside, maybe you're double checking your phone.

You look at the program for a little while.

But then the kids yell and you go off and you make sure they're safe.

You don't move but you look, and then you're back on the program.

What did they say? What happened?

Then something else takes us all the way off for a while. We get that sorted out.

Back.

Level 2.

Level 3, LENTE JOKPA, the program's gone on a bit.

You've paid enough a little bit of attention that now it's gathered your interest.

Something's happening and you want to focus on it more.

You're trying to follow what's happening.

But still, there's other stuff going on in your household that you're on it, on it, on it, on it, on it, and then something else. And you have to turn your attention to that something.

But, we recognize, Oh, that's okay. Come right back.

Level is patching the gaps.

We're on it for quite a while. Something pops us off. Whops. We'll bring it right back.

Common. Probably a really common state of mind that we have.

On it, on it, on it, something pops up, come back.

That's okay. Come back. Patching gap.

We keep working with our recalling, recalling, until our recall is so strong, that nothing can get our attention to completely lose the program anymore.

Now, in real life, don't be in that place while you're watching TV.

If somebody's in trouble, let yourself go take care of them.

But for our example, the program has gotten so interesting to you, that, whoa, this is the most important thing.

Again, it's because the program's gotten interesting, not because we had the power to just turn it on. But just to get the idea.

You know, some movie some book, where once you get into a certain part, it's like, whoa, we are latched on.

Level 4.

But suppose were a bit physically tired. Or were mentally tired.

Although we are really interested in the program, we're drifting off a bit.

We're losing the keen focus, dullness is coming on.

Or suppose it's a part of the movie that's a little scary.

That state of anticipation comes up. It's a little disturbing.

Agitation.

We're, we're adjusting somewhat.

But we need to recognize that the dullness is there, or the agitation is there.

Agitation is pretty obvious. Gross agitation. If it comes in that sense of fear or anticipation. In meditation, it's not likely to be that.

In meditation, it's more likely to be this mind wanting, wanting to think about something else, wanting to think about some aspect of the meditation object instead of just focusing on it.

It's a sense of wanting to wanting to move around to something else, instead of being happy to stay moving around this thing.

It's kind of like the little kid or the nine month old dog. Not a puppy, but it's not fully mature with its manners, it like is tugging at you to play with the ball.

So, on the TV on the program, it's interesting, but not that interesting.

Or it's interesting and you don't maybe like it so much. Like you don't like where it's going so you're upset a little bit.

I think we can relate to that.

It's placing the mind on the object closely.

Then level 5, controlling the mind, DULWAR JEPA.

You're watching this program and getting more and more keenly involved in what's going on. So even though you were a little bit tired,or a little bit disinterested, now whatever is happening on the program, it's like oh, and our mind more deeply engages.

But maybe we're like engaging more with one character.

Then we like to get so focused on their part of the program that we kind of lose the overall storyline.

We've gotten in too deep and we need to back up a little bit to follow the whole thing that's going.

Or maybe in our fascination with the program, we're starting to, like, look at the background details. Or maybe it's a mystery. And we're trying to find the clues.

So we're looking, our tightness or interest has gotten overly tight, and we want to loosen it back up again.

This adjustments happening, it's actually happening very naturally when we're so focused and interested in the program. We're not having to consciously make the adjustment. But now that we're learning these different states of mind, it would be useful to check them out. Next time you're watching a movie, to see what level is my mind at, do I think? You need to be the judge of your level 4 or 5, 6.

Nobody can get in there and say oh, that's your level 5.

Level 6 is the pacifying the mind,SHIWAR JEPA, which means that over detailing watching the movie has loosened up.

Reaching level 7, NAMPAR SHIWAR JEPA, pacifying the mind more totally is that state where your adjustments are happening without effort. They are just automatic.

That would be a very common state of mind when we are deeply engrossed in a movie that we're really enjoying.

We could very easily be at a level 7 concentration on a movie.

That movie that when it's all done, you feel like you've changed, you've been so moved. You've experienced it. Not every movie is going to do that. But there are some that are that engaging, that we are at level 7 because of the quality of the movie in our experience. Not because we said, I'm going to watch this movie at level 7 concentration.

If we have that ability, we could turn it on. We could turn it on when we have a report to write. It would be useful.

We're just trying to get the idea of what is it feel like so I can recognize it when I'm working with it in meditation.

Then, this is where my TV set analogy kind of fails.

Because level 8 quality of concentration, TSE CHIKTU JEPA, means you turn the program on.

No dishes, no kids, no nothing. You sit down.

You're watching the credits. Paying attention kind of to the credits adjusting the movie starts and whoom, you are there.

Level 9 is you are there even on the credits, or the not the credits, but the entry thing. It goes on for the first three minutes, and you‘re just with Level 9. You just turn on the program and you are deeply engrossed.

Then from that can come those four pliancies. The happily on the movie. It feels good to be on the movie. It feels really good to be on the movie. And then it's like, wow, this is an amazing movie. Like you're not even saying that you're just there.

Tom: That was a long list. When you gave the example ever been I, what came to mind was like, Western yoga practices, meditation practices, that we have a lot of fluff around a lot of things now. Right? We have like, walk around, see forests feel things. Or do Tibetan bowl.

So the logic that I hear from most people is, we need that. We need that to calm the body, to calm the mind. But then doesn't this, it also then I come to the spaces, is this laziness? Because most of us don't get to a path like a that space of the meditation, that space of focus, because we're so like, relaxed, and usually your mind is wandering?

Is is that laziness in our practice? Is it like lack of focus truthfully? Or is it necessary to the nervous system? My question makes sense? Because I feel like I've experienced this in like other meditation, and maybe there is a space in time. That that's what cognitively like the level of maturity or the level of whatever that he can. And in the same time, I feel like if I was pulled in and taught right away to start looking to focus and to do this, what you just what you just said, like to come in, I don't need to waste all this time on their own. So is this the laziness of the mind and the body that creates this or it just not knowing? I don't know if my question.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, I think I'm getting it.

I don't know historically, the yoga traditions‘ process for people who have come to it with the antithesis..

Tom: Western, by the way, the example that I gave.

Lama Sarahni: So that's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking, the traditional yoga tradition for spiritual practitioners was a method to reach Nirvana and stay there.

That they had their method of doing so.

Then as that tradition came West, we will say that, and the people that have let's say seeds for the attraction to the practices, but from their western state of mind, what they're looking for, is something to relieve stress and bring more pleasure.

To address that need, we use nice visualizations that engage all the senses, that relax someone. We use sounds to relax the physical body and activate the vagus nerve, in order to bring on the relaxation response, to help people with their stress management.

It's effective, and it's useful within that arena and it isn't what will bring people to stop perpetuating the stresses of life. Give them a tool to cope better, but doesn't ultimately change things. But it's not to disrespect. And there will be some people who get introduced to that, who have the seeds to recognize there is something deeper here. And it will have served them in that way.

This tradition from which the ACI courses come, it is the monastic training in what it takes to stop perpetuating samsara, and all this suffering for all beings in the world. So it's starting from our level of attraction that is different than even the end result of the yoga tradition. And that's really the difference between Shakyamuni Buddha's teachings and the yoga tradition teachings, and the Vedas, even.

Shakyamuni Buddha was trained in that stuff, and he found that for himself, it fell short. Because people still died, got sick, got old.

And that was unacceptable to him.

So, it's different, a different goal for a different reason.

Tom: So the goal is to cut the fluff, for example, and again, Western, nothing to do with yoga. But day to day practice, for example, we are very much glorified, like multitasking.

I'm cooking, I'm listening to a lecture, I'm doing a million more things at the same time, right? Would it start being more beneficial even to my meditation practice to eliminate that behavior?

Lama Sarahni: This tradition says yes.

Yes, that multitasking is an obstacle to single pointed concentration.

It's hard, because it's like, wait a minute, Buddhas are omniscient, emanate everywhere, they are multitasking. They are the ultimate multitaskers. But it's a little bit like we have to go from multitasking to not to being able to multitask ultimately.

You would compare the laziness to those other tradition meditations. They're not being lazy, they're doing them.

Tom: I mean, not so much as laziness, but I feel sometimes I see the approach to meditation is about today. I see their approach in the West to meditation is a lot of relaxation, a lot of a lot of things that it's almost like they talk about relaxation, or bring tools that have like, I'm not relaxed, because I'm not bringing my mind to anything to actually focus the relaxation to. So you're just telling me to relax. It's kind of like when you're mad and someone tells you oh, just relax. It's like you can‘t force my relaxation. And it's almost feel like we're being lazy to from going to the direct thing of starting to focus on the actual thing that we're trying to achieve.

Lama Sarahni: But if they don't even know that that's. If they don't know.

Tom: Yeah, so it was just it like the list just came up very like this because I feel like even if it's not in yoga, we come home, we put the TV on, we eat the food, I'm like, Oh, I'm just taking practice, and I'm just relaxing. But I'm, I'm technically multitasking, I'm not focused on anything. I'm focused on everything. And I catch myself do that.

I am doing my best to stop it, to sit and eat my food and feel every bite and be aware of every bite. But like you said, it's like the omniscient beings like seeing and visiting everything. And then I'm like how I'm supposed to practice on one thing. So is all the additions that I'm doing are just fluffs and distractions, or laziness?

Lama Sarahni: On our meditation cushion, it's all agitation. Distraction, if we go off to them. Agitation if we're still focused on this, but we're doing all these other things too. Are holding all those other things in mind at the same time. So in our meditation practice, we're wanting to recognize that, let those drop away for now. I'll come back to you. Don't worry. But this is one gets my attention now. And then, but in life, if we don't multitask while we're driving, we're, we're not a safe driver.

So it's not that we want to turn off multitasking completely. We want to be able to turn it on and off. So becoming more aware of it, and maybe even, I'll come in and give myself three multitask. I'll do the dishes, I'll do right. We could play with that off cushion. It's a good point.

Tom: Thank you.

So level 8 and 9, that's like if we're meditating at level 7 pretty regularly.

That's going to give way to level 8 meditations. Meaning just that automatic effort happening in your first five minutes, and then your remaining hour just go smoothly.

Then level 9, you just turn it on when you sit down, start your object, you're done.

Those don't come in glimpses. Because the difference is what happens at the beginning of the meditation. Level 7 will show up for a little while, maybe even in a given session. Suppose you're at an hour long session and 20 minutes of it, you're actually working with your different levels. And you recognize well I'm at level 7, on my image of my Buddha. And then I switch over to my review meditation.

The idea is to have the same quality of attention on the review as I had on my image. Now the review is, I'm thinking through: First I take a Lama. They tell me get the essence of life. What they mean by that? This is a very mental word thing.

We're gonna lose the level 7 very likely.

In fact, the Lama, the essence of the Lama,… we hear the traffic noise and we're off.

We're all the way back to 1, 2 or 3.

It will all come together similarly to how learning a new task takes learning this part, learning this part, learning this part, and then it finally all comes together.

What's so helpful is to find something in life where you can think through these different qualities of concentration so that you can recognize them when you're doing your fixation section of your daily practice.

And really get your mind on the object, be concentrating. When your timer goes off think: What level do I think that was?

3? Was I patching gaps?

4? Was I really on it, the whole time?

Dullness, agitation?

We want to have some method where we can actually know where we thought we were.

Then, maybe that's all that's necessary. But it could be helpful to actually write it down. Have some method of tracking the quality of your concentration.

It would be okay to say, Okay, I have a 10 minute fixation, a 5 minute review and a 15 minute analysis.

My 10 minute fixation, my timer just went off, stop.

Write down: 10 minutes.

Object: image of Buddha.

Level: 3

And makes just some brief little note.

Easy at 3, or had to work really hard at 3.

Then set the book aside.

Tune back in, do a couple of breaths and start your review meditation section.

Five minutes goes off.

You could just note in your journal: review meditation, check.

Or you could even say hmm, on my review meditation, what level do I think I was?

Oh, 2, great.

Go to your analysis section.

At the end of the analysis, what level do I think I was?

1, 7.

What was my Aha? Because the analysis is applying some reasoning to our understanding of where that thing came from.

Just write a little Whoa, got a glimpse that it had to be from me.

It helps to track. Not that you necessarily are gonna go back and reread your meditation journal. I've never reread mine. But it helps to know that somebody was watching, like I was watching.

It made me work harder.

I admit I don't keep a meditation journal anymore.

But when I did for all those years, it was really, really useful.

Maybe we'll talk more about that.

So that's actually all I have for tonight's class.

Next class, Chris from the other, the morning class. She put together a chart using the stages of meditation chart with the monkey and the elephant. And the 7 levels and the antidotes. Like she put together this thing she calls it flashcards, but it's very elaborate. I thought that we could put it up there, and see how it works.

I'm not sure it's completely accurate because I couldn't quite see all the pieces.

We'll look. But I think it would help us fine tune how the problems and their obstacles relate to the levels. And how this dullness and agitation which is the elephant in the monkey art weaving their play with our mind.

I think that's my plan for next class is we'll just look at her paper and see if it can help us all to understand better.

Then we have one more class after them I don't know yet what we'll do.

Anything else, like from anything else now since we have a little bit of extra time and if not we’ll end early with our dedication.

[Usual closing]

I've enjoyed these extra classes. Thanks for the opportunity.

Extra Class 5:

25 February 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Extra Class 5

We are the extra credit meditation course classes, this is February 25, 2024.

Let‘s gather our minds here as we usually do, please.

Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Usual opening]

(8:30)

I wasn't sure what to do today, I have kind of covered the things that I had wanted to share. Then Chrys from the morning class put together that document with each of the different stages of meditation, and the meditation chart, the antidotes. All of it in one with different colors as the color code, if you had a chance to look at it. I thought to share it, and have us go through it a little bit, and see if it seems helpful to go through the whole thing or not.

If so, we will, and if not, I have something else to talk about, that I'll do either at the end or next, last class. Then depending on what happens with last class, probably it'll be mostly questions and answers. Think of what's still not clear, and we'll try to address that in this group Thursday evening class. Then we'll be off until ACI 4 starts if you're wishing to continue with us. I'll send everything we need to know about that soon.

Tom: I was wondering if maybe in this or the next class, we can talk about how to build a daily practice. I think Joana brought it up, like two classes ago. How to structure it and because you said that the lineage doesn't really give us the structure thing and like, what's the right thing for us what we can do something like that will be or get an advice or a frame, or something to look at will be really great.

Lama Sarahni: I will do so. Yeah. That's what's up my sleeve for later this evening, I hope. Anything else that I'm missing that would help you?

If it occurs to you, email me before Thursday. So if I do need to prepare something different I can do.

The Process of Meditation - An overview created by a student

Let me share screen with Chrys’ document.

This is the explanation of the chart, which I personally have not spent a whole lot of time studying that chart. I just didn't find it so useful for me. Although that said, a number of years ago, at one of the Diamond Mountain programs Geshe Michael gave an evening talk that was translated into Spanish that went into the details of that meditation chart. That was the best explanation of it that I had ever heard.

I don't exactly know where one would find that. It was either a Kamalashila Diamond Cutter Sutra program, or it was an Arya Nagarjuna program. Because those are the ones I went to. So it would be probably mixed into there on the knowledge base. Or maybe it's even in the knowledge base under meditation instructions. He has the different categories.

Chrys put together each of the what we're calling levels of meditations on one page. There's nine pages here. She used the teachings that came from the Lam Rim called the 6 powers to attain the nine levels. We did not talk about that in ACI 3.

She has the nine stages in blue.

She has these transitions, which I'm not sure where those come from.

She has these four states of mind, also not something we talked about in ACI 3, but it is talked about in Lam Rim, in the gold color.

Then the problems of meditation and their antidotes in black.

Then she has the drawing that comes from the ACI student notes. For what the mind seems to be like at this stage that we're talking about.

I don't really want to spend the time reading this all out loud to you.

One difficulty I have with this is that by the time we reach Level 1 meditation, we've already gotten over the „I'm not interested in meditating stage“. Because we're sitting down to try it.

So if the first problem of meditation, lelo, is just I'm not interested. We've already figured out it has some benefit, I want to and I'm going to try. We already have the first 3 because we're sitting on our cushion trying. That's level 1.

But if we say, I don't actually have the meditation problem lelo until I'm trying to meditate, then there are days I just don't feel like doing it. That's an obstacle to ever getting on the object. We can think of it that way as well. In which case, the way she has it here would be kind of appropriate. Except that this lelo antidote isn't happening during stage 1, it happens to get us to stage 1.

As long as we're understanding that this isn't everything that's going on, while we're at stage 1, this is everything that we need to get us to stage 1. And stage 1 is that state of mind where we're trying, but our minds on the object only briefly and we're off it longer than we're on it. Remember that?

So, even to get here, we had to overcome the laziness, and I don't think it's just by thinking of the benefits of meditation. We also have to reach the second one which was interested enough to try it out, in order to get to level 1.

Adjust the use of this chart as feels useful to you. I'm not going to make changes to it. But we'll see if Chrys does it.

If we have sufficiently gotten over our „I don't feel like meditating today“, the benefits are such that I'm willing to try, we are sitting on our cushion trying, our mind is staying on the object a little longer than before—we're at stage 2, we've learned.

Of these six powers, the learning the instruction from the Lama has now gone onto contemplating the instruction. Not meaning that that's what we're doing in meditation, but that we've done it enough that we have a greater ability to stay interested on the object that we've put before us.

We're needing still strong effort to stay on the object, we're growing our drenpa.

How we know we're making progress is, we're on the object longer than we were before. It's not like, okay, level 1 done, I'm going to level 2. It'll be a continuum. So level 2, that diagram looks like dashes instead of dots.

(19:35) Then level 3, we learned, is patching the gaps.

The power that we're learning to do is to pull the mind back quickly, recognize it's off, pull it back. This suggests that it's part of antidote number three of the first problem.

But my same consideration is here that I don't think it's a one to one relationship between antidote number three and reaching level 3.

But that first four antidotes need to all be really full on strong for us to get to the place where we can reach level 4.

But it's not first antidote - stage 1, second antidote - stage 2. understand?

(20:50) Level 4 is that level in which we have our recollection strong enough that we will not completely lose the object through our whole session, from reaching level 4 to the end of our session.

The power that we grow to be able to do that is this power of pulling the mind back to the object, which is that quality of mind called drenpa.

The achievement is, we never completely lose the object until we decide to turn it off.

This state of mind, it's this state of mind of flow—we saw that in the previous one as well.

This suggests that when we get good at meditating, that's the actually overcoming lelo, and so we can finally stay on our object.

Again, I'm not sure there's a correlation there. But it's useful to think of it that way I think.

Let me see if I can move you guys and go back and look what's happening at the meditation chart for these until we get to the staying on the object.

I'm not going to spend the time doing that, because we don't have the whole chart up and the little pieces I don't think would be all that useful.

We did stage 3. We did stage 4.

The little diagram, it comes from the student notes of ACI, it's now shifted from just the arrow, and the time on the object has been getting longer and longer. Once the time on the object is always, the arrow becomes solid, do you see it? We've got the solid arrow. That means we're on the object, we're not losing it. This is describing how from this point on until we reach Level 8 and 9, were in danger of either agitation swinging between gross and subtle agitation, and dullness swinging between gross and subtle dullness. The process is in making these adjustments that bring the dullness up, trying to hold it along this line. Which this line is going to represent both clarity and intensity, but with up without agitation. No intensity and no clarity make the difference between whether this is up or down. You decide which one means subtle and which one means gross.

We get agitated, we fix it. We over fix it, we get dull, we fix dullness, we bring it back.

It takes so much effort to stay there at the intensity, we slip into agitation. It swings back and forth. The diagram doesn't look like it's swinging back and forth. But my experience is that it does.

(25:33) In stage 5 we're still on the object. Apparently, the first thing that happens is we get dull. My own experience was the agitation came first. But it doesn't matter. We're going to do the same thing. So the power that we're growing to reach stage 5 consistently is that watchfulness that the sheshin state of mind, watchfulness, that checks. She says watchfulness to catch herself coming off the object. That's already full on to get to stage 4. So I am gonna, when I talk with her about it tomorrow, I'm gonna say I'm not sure I agree with this one. But it may just be that I am misunderstanding the wording, because watchfulness means sheshin, recollection is holding ourselves on the object. This watchfulness is catching ourselves becoming agitated or dull, and in level 5, apparently we're watching for dullness.

We're still in the flow. I would put this number two back up in level 4. The bringing the mind back also, I think these are in the wrong section. Because what we're doing at stage 5 is adjusting our intensity and our clarity. Not whether we're on or off the object. So you can make a note on this one about that.

(28:00) Level 6, we're still working on the checking. When we check, what we're checking for is clarity, intensity, agitation. Because we're already at the stage where we don't have to check whether we're on or off the object. We are on it. Otherwise, we're still at level 1, 2 or 3. We're staying watchful of our quality of mind checking for dullness, correcting dullness. Stage 6, recognizing if that correction for dullness has gone over into agitation. Here the problem is the third problem, agitation or dullness, that's true in stage 5 as well. The antidote is watchfulness, the sheshin. That's true at stage 5 as well. The sheshin kicks in, it's our reminder to check. When we check and see we have a problem, we're supposed to fix it. If we're agitated, we loosen up. If we're dull, we tighten up. If we were dull, it meant we were stage 5 apparently. If we're agitated, we‘re stage 6. That doesn't matter so much. 5, 6, 7, you don't need to make distinctions between them. We want to be there working our way towards level 7.

(30:32) Level 7, making the mind totally peaceful. Meaning we're at that level where our adjusting for dullness and agitation are automatic. But it's still needing to happen. There's still effort necessary to stay at that level of clarity with intensity.

‘The dullness and agitation aren't attacking us, we are attacking them’, I remember Geshela saying that. We're not going to lose ourselves to dullness and agitation. We're still in the flow. With the dullness and agitation that can come, we need to take action to fix it, if they do come. Prevent it before they come. That's what's happening at level 7. To do that the diagram has made these ups and downs smoother, and the dashes just indicating that there's less struggle going on here. Level 7.

(32:06) Level 8 if we recall, we have to make the effort to get things right, and then it smooths out. I liked the diagram. It's just jiggly at first, on the object, not dull, not agitated, but not just right, until we reach it.

Then the problem is taking action when we don't need to anymore. Again, where she has the five problems, one of the problems is we check but don't take action when we should. And when we check again, the problem is still there. To overcome that is to take action. Once we reach this level where it's floating along without even the automatic adjustments, if our habit is ‚I need to check and adjust, I need to check and adjust‘, then we keep having the attacking and we don't need to. We can let that go. To not let that go is taking action when we don't need to take action.

Once we get through the wiggly part of stage 8, where we're still needing to check and take action, once we get through that, and we're on to the object with that ease, then we stop checking. How are you going to know? Until you get to the point where you‘re checking, it's the same. You check. It's right. Okay, I guess I can quit checking.

(34:19) Then finally level 9, not meaning in that same session where you reach level 8. But meaning in our career of meditation, we don't even need the little squiggly effort at the beginning. We just sit down, absorb, absorb to that level of being the experience of the object, and no checking necessary.

So really, at level 9, there's not even any problem anymore.

They call this mode of focus, habituation or effortless. No more gross dullness, no more subtle dullness, no more gross agitation, no more subtle agitation.

Then, in the explanation of the meditation chart, it says, once we've reached this level 9, and we do it repeatedly, those four SHIN JANGs come on sooner and sooner. They start to come on at level 7, but at level 9 they're pretty consistently coming on. Then we have that platform of mind that we can then effectively turn our meditation object towards the no self nature of our meditation object, or whatever our analysis for that empty nature of something it's is going to be. From that platform of level 9 with the SHIN JANGs, it means we've made our mind into this tool that we can say, Okay, now tool, let's look at the emptiness of my teacher. Let's look at the emptiness of me. Let's look at the dependent origination of my angry boss.

Our quality of mental focus will not change just because we've changed the object underneath the microscope.

That's what this is saying. They say, as a result, you can become the one who flies in the sky. Meaning reaches the direct perception of emptiness.

I think pulling it all together is helpful. But if you're are going to use this, use it with a heightened curiosity about, is this consistent with what we learned? And how's it gonna help me? If you find it's like that too much information, that's fine. Put it away. Don't feel obligated. If you want to adjust and make your own meditation chart, that would be really helpful, actually. But then go back and double check it carefully to make sure that you haven't made up something, or justified some bad habit that we're doing. Come up with a way that you can see how the progress gets made by using the eight antidotes to overcome the five problems in the arena of learning to fix our mind on an object of our choice with these qualities of mind.

Anybody have any comment, clarification, question usefulness on just this stuff?

Daily practice

(39:23) Now, we've been hearing that this thing we call our mind has no qualities of its own. It has no inherent qualities. Technically, it doesn't even have its own inherent identity. But don't worry about that right now.

We can say that we have always had a mind. We've always had this aware, being aware. If we are aware now, then we've always had awareness. Course 4 is about looking at that statement.

The mind, the awareness that we've always had, has always not had any qualities of its own. We hear the mind has no qualities of its own. Well, then what is it?

How can I have something that has no qualities? It has no qualities of its own means that any quality we've ever experienced it to have, have always been results of causes from before.

There was never a moment that your mind had no qualities at all.

There's never been a moment that you had no mind.

Every moment with every quality that the mind has ever had, has always been dependent upon being results of some cause that we made before.

We're trying to think of it linearly. But think of it as circular. When we think of it as circular, it makes more sense to say, Well, where is the first moment?

Like where's the start of a circle? You don't even ask that, right?

The quality of our mind now has come about as a result of what it was influenced by before. Minds get influenced by the things that they're exposed to. The things that we are exposed to are in fact qualities of that mind also.

The longer we stay exposed to some quality of another, the more imprint is made on our own mind with no qualities of its own, that will then influence it some day to perceive itself in a certain way.

If we want to experience our minds as happy and wise, and maybe even divine love, wisdom mind, we would want to spend as much time as possible exposing our mind to happy, wise, even divine others.

So a daily practice, mine goes something like this:

Settle in with your breath

You would settle in with your breath, practice using it to strengthen your recollection, holding your mind on the breath for two, three minutes is all. We say count the breaths to 10 without losing your recollection on the breath. And every time you do lose it, you pull it back and start to one again. Technically 10 breaths if you stayed on it the whole time would be a minute. Not even a minute.

But because we don't ever actually get to 10, we're gonna go, 1, 2, 3, 5. Maybe we give ourselves a little bit extra time to work on our recollection of the breath. But no more than two to three minutes in this tradition. Because it's just gaining that automaticity of, Oh, when I focus on my breath, says the mind, I turn inward.

So maybe you only need three breaths three times, before your mind, it's so well trained, it goes, Okay, I'm ready to go inward.

Maybe it just needs one nice long inhale, exhale.

Maybe it needs 35.

But this tradition says, if you spend all your meditation time just working with your breath, we've missed the opportunity to do other stuff. But because the breath is there, it's a good thing to use to trigger the turn inside.

It's kind of self hypnosis, give yourself a trigger that turns you inward.

Set your motivation & your refuge

You tell your mind, time to meditate by watching the breath. Then you stop watching the breath, and you go to setting your motivation and your refuge. You call forth the holy being. You hear them say, Think about somebody who's hurting like just the way we open class. You can open your own meditation in that same way. So that you've got your motivation set, you've established your refuge.

In the refuge prayer it says you know, I go for refuge in the Buddha Dharma and Sangha. But what it means is, I'm going for protection in a growing understanding of how my behavior now creates my future experiences, and so I want to learn how to behave, such that I can stop everybody's hurting so much, hurting each other.

So although we use the formal words, think, what are we really taking refuge in?

The empty nature of me and things and that means I can, I really can reach the happiness through which I will help everybody reach it too.

Somehow get ourselves motivated in our refuge and Bodhichitta with beyond the word meaning.

7 Preliminaries

Then slide right into your seven limbs. Because you're talking to that holy being about your refuge, and your refuge grown out of your wish to help that other one in that deep, ultimate way.

Then recognize that that holy being is there to teach you and guide you. They've said yes to our request.

Then let your mind admire them. Tell them a story about what you admire and aspire to be how you aspire to be come.

Then make them some kind of offering in your mind, and include always some offering from some behavior—big or small—that you did because of something that you heard them teach you. Some way that you were intentionally more kind than you would have been. And see them just like beam with delight at that.

Then tell them some mistake you made, some seed that's been planted, that you know when it ripens, it's going to be unpleasant, and very likely the reaction will just perpetuate it. Just with regrets, say, I really know better, I couldn't help myself, and I really do regret it. And I'm going to do such and such to make up for it, like this meditation. Then, in this situation that's gonna come up tomorrow, I'm gonna be really, really careful to do this, instead of that. Be specific.

Then see how happy they will be with you with that, too. When you tell them that you did that thing that you regret, they're not going to scowl at you. They're going to be, Wow, you are so courageous, you are so wise to recognize the power of destroying that seed. I'm so proud of you.

Then offer them your rejoicing. Tell them other good stuff you did.

We're supposed to brag on ourselves. It feels weird, but do it.

Brag on other people that you see too. But the tendency is to brag more on them than on ourselves. We really do need to have a chance in some safe space to be able to say, I really am making some progress here. The Lama is the one you do that with.

We then ask them to stay and ask them to continue to teach, or ask them to continue to teach and to stay, whatever direction you like best.

Then make a dedication of just what you've done so far.

Doing the seven limbs is a great goodness. So be happy and dedicate right then.

You can dedicate your seven limbs to your meditation career taking off.

Or you can dedicate to your ultimate goal. You can dedicate over and over and over.

But here just do a brief one. Because we're just getting started.

That breath, opening prayers and seven limbs should all of it not take more than 20 minutes, better 15.

When we know it well, and we have in mind what we're going to offer, what we're going to confess, and what we're going to rejoice about, then this seven limb will go easily and smoothly.

Meditation

When we're done with the seventh limb, again, if you need to shift and wiggle, have a sip of water, get refreshed. It's okay to break and then go back in.

It's probably actually a good habit because it means we can step in and step out, and step in and step out, on our demand.

We won't have to forever. You'll be able to sit and do all of this without shifting and wiggling. But it's okay to do so at the beginning and probably helpful.

We have those 3 sections: fixation, review and analytical.

I personally like to do my review right after the 7 limb.

1st part Review Meditation

What we're going to review, we have various options as we go through our ACI training. The two that we actually have so far are the texts the Three Principal Paths, we studied that in ACI 1, and the text The Source of All My Good, which if you did the pre ACI 1, you already have that. If you didn't, you got that text in this course, although we haven't fully studied it.

We also have the 1000 Angels of Bliss text, but that's a 7 limb prayer.

Even though we've already done the 7 limb, you could use that text as a review also, just in terms of learning the 7 limbs, if you don't already know them.

Once you know them, that prayer takes on a different usefulness.

At this stage, we would pick between the Three Principal Paths, or The Source of All My Good text, and for your review meditation section, you can actually just read it. Get it out and read it. We're not behind closed eyes, we're not visualizing, we're focusing our attention on the words of those verses, and really trying to hear what we're saying from each of those verses—going from one to the next to the next, getting a notion of feel of how one leads to the next. How the ideas flow in those two prayers.

Geshela says, you've reviewed for instance The Source of All My Good, you've reviewed it well enough, if you were to see like three or four words, one stands out from one of the verses laying around, and you'd go, Oh. You could finish the rest of that stanza and know what section of the Lam Rim it was talking about.

There's a phrase in there about the vows for the children of all the victors, and it's like bing, that whole verse pops into your mind and you recognize all that's the morality of the higher way, and I know where that fits in the Lam Rim.

That comes by reading that prayer again and again and again, in this high concentrated state of learning it.

There is an advantage to memorizing that text. Because then you can do your review by mentally reciting it instead of reading it. But if you read it with that high quality of mind, every day for a while, you'll be surprised that you actually have memorized it, and you won't need the paper.

Or if you at that point try to memorize it, you'll be surprised how quickly that you get it. If you do decide, I'm going to actually memorize that text, a really great help to memorizing is to memorize while you're walking. That the alternate body movement of walking while you are memorizing something, sticks it in that part of the brain a whole lot easier and faster than if you're just are sitting, trying to recite it.

It really is useful, so you get yourself in a safe place where you can pace back and forth and not bump into stuff, or not walk into the road, and memorize a verse at a time. You'll be surprised how quickly you get it.

In your review, you're getting familiar with the flow of those different texts, whichever one you're using. As you learn more, you may graduate your review to, for instance, being the qualities of a Lama. You review that for a while.

Then you might go to the next step. What is the essence of my life that they're talking about me needing to understand? Review again and again the 8 leisure's and fortunes, 8 and 10. What are those sufferings of human life?

Any of those lists that the Gelukpa has come up with, they can be our review meditation material. We just read it and think about it with this high level of concentration. But really not working on your recollection, not working on your level of awareness, just paying close attention.

You set, you decide, how much time do I want to spend on my review practice?

Maybe five minutes is enough. It doesn't take long to read those Source of All My Good. But you also don't want to cut yourself short, because you are spending time with high holy ideas when you're reading that text.

Maybe you read it more than once in your review meditation. Maybe you read it forward, and then you read the verses backwards, thinking, How did I get to this one by doing what's in that one? How did I get to that one by doing what's in this one?

Work it out backwards is still review.

We're not analyzing, we're just thinking and reviewing.

2nd part Fixation Meditation

Your time is up, shift and wiggle if you need, and then I like to go from review to fixation.

For fixation maybe you're going to use the image or idea of your teacher there.

This being who is for you love, compassion, wisdom. You recall them sitting there in front of you, get your feeling that you're with them, and you're looking at them and they're looking at you. All you have to do is sit there and stare at them.

When David and I were just getting serious, one summer we spent a lot of time at the lake. We're sitting in the boat just hanging up, just staring at each other, really not saying anything at all. All kinds of communication must have been going on but my little brother, who is early teen, 13, 14. Paul says to us at dinner one day, I see you guys staring at each other. Like I see you guys making goo goo eyes. It was just so funny. Who knows how much time, because there was nothing but his eyes. Same for him apparently.

So with the Lama, like make goo goo eyes with your Lama. But you know I don't mean that in the wrong way. Feel, bask in their love. With fixation, when you don't lose them at all. Then with clarity, intensity, fixing agitation, fixing dullness.

If you're basking in their love, and this little part of you is just watching, on or off.

Are you going to go off attention on this being who loves you so much?

Not likely, but are you gonna start to wonder, Am I making all this up?

Shut up. Okay, fix it, that's agitation.

Oh, I'm getting sleepy. They might go away, wake up.

Our fixation can be on an object that we enjoy being with. It's totally up to you. If it's true, that our mind takes on the qualities of the thing we spend time with, that's why we say, use a meditation object that has the qualities that you want your mind to take on.

Make a serious attempt at fixation, growing drenpa to reach fixation, growing our ability to check, correct, growing our ability to make the effort and all of that until we just closed in their love.

This fixation time with the Lama is the time to work on those 9 stages. You give yourself a time, 10 minutes, 15 minutes.

Oh, I want to spend most of my time there. Alright, fine, 20 minutes.

Then, when the timer goes off, so sorry. Even if you want to stay there, you say, Oh, no! Time for my analysis.

3rd Analytical Meditation

Again, what you're going to analyze is up to you. If you can't figure anything out, your teacher will help you decide. But when we understand the topics that will we're working on, we will gain this ability to assign ourselves our analysis that we want to be working on.

If for instance, you want to use your analysis with this same object of focus, that being who loves you so much. One method of doing that analysis would be, as you settle back into your analytical meditation, you think, Well, here's my precious being who loves me so much. Here with me looking at them is my neighbor, who's not in this tradition at all, and my neighbor's dog.

We're all three looking at, wow, this being who loves me so much. And I recognize that I think they all see that being the same way I do. But it only takes an instant to think, No way can they see them like I see them. It's so unique to me, my experience of them. My neighbor doesn't know anything about somebody teaching karma and emptiness as far as I know. I really don't think the dog is seeing them the way I'm seeing them.

What's the real one there? Don't even answer the question.

Because it's the same as saying what happens when we put this on the table and all the people, and all the dogs, and all the flies go away. What's there then?

There's no answer to that question. It's that, ahhh.

The analysis of the precious holy being made of love, compassion and wisdom is the same thing. What's the real one there?

The answer is, Ahhh, and fixate on the Ahhh.

It's actually literal, that that's the answer, Ahhh.

But the idea is to feel that absence without nothing. Absence without nothing, absence without annihilation. That's all analysis is.

Think, conclusion and hold it.

Then we'll lose it, and bring it back up again.

Think, conclusion, Ahhh.

Dedication

Then your timer goes off. We've just completed our meditation session with, we did review, fixation, analysis. We did all three.

We set ourselves up nicely, we had a nice moderate motivation.

We think back.

Yeah, maybe my fixation, my level of meditation was actually level 3, that was pretty good. I'm happy with that. I did it to help everybody reach their freedom, that's a great goodness.

I'll offer that goodness to my precious being.

I'll ask them again to stay.

And I'll dedicate this goodness to my meditation progress. Because through that meditation progress, I will go on to help that other in that deep and ultimately.

You've done a good job on your meditation effort. Even if you decide my fixation was level 1, you did it. That's a rejoicable.

Tipps

We all learn different ways of doing an analytical meditation. As we learned through that ACI courses, you'll find the one that you like the best. You can use it again and again and again.

If you ever get bored with it, then you turn to a different one.

With your review, meditation, when you feel like you've reviewed such that you've gleaned a lot, you go to some different topic for review.

When you've gleaned that, go to the next.

The Lam Rim topics are set up that, once you go through all of them which would take us over a year or so, you start again.

You check out your renunciation and see how it's changed a year later.

What you understand about what's meant by renunciation, just by reviewing what we learned from before.

Our understanding will go deeper.

You go from that to the Lama to the…

Anywhere along the line you want to spend more time, it's your practice.

Let's take a break and I'll give you some other more specific instructions. Not instructions but suggestions.

(Break)

Other suggestions on Meditation

(72:25) You asked: What if I've only got 15 minutes for my meditation?

How do I do this meditation that sounds like it's going to take an 1,5 hours.

Give yourself 20 minutes. Do your breathwork and your seven limb prayer, really conscientiously, really intensively and every week add a minute.

By the time you're at 30 min, do your preliminaries in 10 minutes, 5 min of review, 10 min of fixation, and 10 min of analysis.

Do I have it right? Is that 30 minutes?

Keep adding a minute until you build up to 30 minutes in your life, working out just fine. Just use the preliminaries as your meditation, is my advice.

Because you don't have enough time to do the others. Without the others, our analysis won't be sufficient.

The goodness of the preliminaries done again and again and again, as our meditation session, will help grow the momentum that our meditation life will be able to infiltrate our life without any big shift—which is the point of adding a minute a week. Everything shifts.

Tom: Can I ask another question? I find myself kind of struggling with sound or readings just because of the language. But even it's like a written in Hebrew, for example, it's such a like, every language like I don't speak that way. Similar words did not make sense to me. So I don't feel very connected to read, it just kind of like saying words.

Do you have any recommendation how to tackle it? I found a little bit more connection to like The Heart Sutra. And then I started hearing it in Sanskrit. That felt really nice. So started to learning it a little bit in Sanksrit. But I'm just not finding myself able to memorize, because it took me months to even try to be able to say Thus, the word Thus in English was, like so hard to say. It‘s repeated a lot.

Lama Sarahni: A review meditation means, it's an intellectual state, where we are recalling this point, and then that point, and that point, and that point, with an understanding how each one relates to the next.

If we know those, then you don't need the words of the prayer.

But for me, to learn it in a set of verses was easier than to just take an outline and memorize an outline.

The review meditation is really not about getting a deep, heartfelt connection to the prayer yet. That will come. But it's about burning into our knowledge base, this sequence of how we go about getting from A to Z.

How did you learn all your different pose sequences? I presume you looked at pictures, and you understood what's being moved to move from this one to that one. You review them again and again so that now you can just guide somebody through it from this to that to this to that. So the purpose of the review meditation is to learn our material in that way.

I guess I would suggest for you personally, would be to work with the wording of the prayers outside of a meditation session, to see if you can get a feel for what the principle of each verse is talking about. Then, if you need to put that into some other format, for your review, that would work.

To do that it takes studying each verse, and digging in. But you could do that outside of your meditation session, because I could see in someone who is used to meditating in a certain way, to then being so much up here, in a language that doesn't feel right. Then in your own language where the words aren't right, I can see how that's an obstacle.

Do it outside of meditation until you get the click.

Review Meditation

We use a review meditation to burn this sequence of ideas into our mind.

The Lam Rim is the sequence of the steps that will take us to the end of suffering, not for us, but for everyone.

That's a real basic outline to learn.

There's a short version, and there's longer versions, of course. But the principles are pretty basic.

It starts with the quality of our renunciation. How sick and tired are we of living in a world that doesn't work right? Are we sick and tired enough to do something different, to do something about it?

The review can just be thinking about life in Samsara. Is it true that it's become just not acceptable for me anymore, that there just has to be another way.

Like, I remember the moment it happened to me.

But for others, it's something that comes on over time.

Our review is thinking intellectually, about our level of determination to change.

Then that naturally leads into the power of a teacher, the needing a teacher.

What kind of teacher? What are they going to teach me?

When I take a teacher, am I still in charge?

What if they're teaching me something I didn't sign up for?

Our review in the power of a teacher, the qualities of a teacher, until we're quite familiar with what we mean by a teacher, and the advantage of taking ourselves to one.

Then when that feels familiar, we can go on to the first stage of what they teach us.

Which, if you recall was, look at the opportunity you've got.

Look at what you don't have that you could have had that would prevent you from having this opportunity.

Count your blessings, number one. But number two, by way of pointing out what we do and don't have, it tells us that we could have had any one of those at any time, the obstacles I mean. We recognize that there is no guarantee that I'm going to get this circumstances again.

When we're quite familiar with the 8 and the 10, then we would shift our review meditation to what if I lose those? The teachings on impermanence, which come in the form of those nine steps in gaining a Death awareness.

Because part of the nine stages in gaining a Death awareness is learning about the power of having a spiritual path that directs us in the behavior, that prevents us from a lower rebirth. At the very least, helps us stay on our path in a next life.

Once we understand that, the sequence of the principles, the next thing that comes up is, well who can teach me that?

My Lama, will you teach me that? So that we can take refuge in that which can really protect us? What can really protect us?

The Three Jewels. What's meant by the Three Jewels?

How do they protect me? Only by teaching?

That would be a review for a couple of days, a week, or a month, whatever it takes.

Then what do they teach me?

Four laws of karma, principles of karma. Karmic consequences of the 10 non virtues, we haven't learned that yet, it's coming.

We review the laws of karma. How karma works.

Then from that, we might move to a review of the five spiritual paths, so that we get a better understanding of where our learning to live by karma more conscientiously can take us. We review those five paths for a while until they're familiar.

Get the idea?

Then, from there, we might move to reviewing what's Nirvana, and how is that state of mind reached?

Then from that, we might go into Bodhichitta. If I can reach that state of no suffering, what about everybody else?

There's a sequence that we move our minds through to grow that wish in our hearts to become the one who can help everyone reach that state.

That's the seven step cause and effect method of reaching Bodhichitta. Or the equalizing and exchanging yourself and others method. Or even mixing those two together, as Pabongka Rinpoche did if you recall, the 13.

That would be a review that maybe will take us. Each one of these we could spend a few days before moving to the next one, a week, a month, whatever it takes, you need. A week on this one, six months on that one.

Until it becomes so familiar.

From the Bodhichitta, the next step may be reviewing those six flavors of emptiness. Then maybe you get to that point, and it's like, well, the next step is the Diamond Way, and I don't have that. Fine. I'll go back and I'll start over.

Let's look at renunciation again.

Then don't be surprised if when you revisit renunciation, it'll mean something different. Because everything else that you now become more familiar with, is now informing what you mean by refuge, what you mean by renunciation.

It's really a sweet system, just by reviewing a few minutes in each session.

Another sequence you could take would be to look at the synopsis of each of the ACI courses. They could be your review. Like ACI 1 is three principal paths. What's that about? Until we get it kind of clear. Not meaning study it, just what does it teach me? And how does that go to ACI 2, refuge in the wish?

Then meditation, why does meditation come up?

Then whatever the next one is, proof of future lives.

Then how karma works. There's a sequence there, on purpose.

Then Diamond Cutter Sutra.

Then what's 8, past and future lives? Maybe four is not proof of future lives. Maybe that's 8.

9 is ethical behavior. 10, 11, 12 is Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.

So growing our Bodhichitta.

Then 13, everybody's favorite, perception theory and logic. Venerable Gyelse is going to be teaching that soon. Anybody wants to take it again?

Then 14, practices for a good heart.

Then 15, what the Buddha really meant.

That's a Lam Rim sequence. Is a good one.

8 is the realms of existence.

4 is proof of future lives.

5 is how karma works.

6 is diamond cutter sutra, Prajna Paramita.

7 is vows, Bodhisattva vows.

8 is realms of existence, everybody wants to skip that course, but you can't.

9 is vowed morality.

Thank goodness they made 8 8, instead of 2. Or we would all run away.

The idea of the review is to learn it, just learn it intellectually. Not the actual details of the material, but the sequence.

The Object for Analytical Meditation

The object for analysis, you can use the same object that you were doing your fixation on, you can use as your object for analysis.

Or, you can choose something else as your object for analysis.

Your analytical meditation can be used to learn how to apply the analysis, and your analytical meditation can be used to do the analysis to reach the conclusion.

Until we learn how to do the analysis, we are trying it on for size during our analytical meditation. Once we're familiar with it, then it takes this different quality, where you're really using it to reach this Aha, and then parking on the Aha.

Again, it takes time to develop our ability to do any given analytical meditation.

We learn a bunch of them, because one of them, you'll resonate with, and the rest will be, huh?

When you find the one you resonate with, you are very welcome to stay with that one for your entire career. You are also very welcome to, when that one goes dry—it's like too easy, I get to the conclusion, and I don't get any deeper in my conclusion,—then maybe it's time to go to a different one. Challenge ourselves to work with one that we didn't resonate with so much at first, that maybe now from our work with the one that was easier, this harder one will take us deeper.

We can be the judge. It's the beauty of this particular system, the Gelukpa system, where we learn it all and then we get to put together what works for us.

It's helpful if we have a teacher to check in with them from time to time to make sure that we're not missing something or slacking off.

Them being our teacher, we've given them permission to challenge us, and help us correct.

All the traditions say, rely upon your teacher. They're channeling the Buddhas, they know what you need.

Culturally that could look like I don't do anything without asking my teacher first.

They'll instruct me in the meditation and I'll go meditate on that topic, and no other topic until I think I understand it. Then I'll go back to them and say, This is what I understand. And they'll either say, Great, now meditate on this, or they'll say, Back to the drawing board.

That is a tradition and that does work.

This particular branch says, Teach them what they need to know, what they need to learn, and teach them how to self adjust and self choose. Because then we are empowered in this practice, instead of relying on an outer all the time.

Those outers are impermanent. We aren't always going to have them.

So if we train ourselves to rely on them for everything in that way, then at some point, we're going to be lost.

If we rely upon them in the way of guide me in how to guide myself, then we are able to guide ourselves. Especially in the realm where we don't have access to them every day.

Another way to use our analytical meditation time is to analyze something that we've been taught to see whether or not we can confirm it for ourselves. We're supposed to do that.

And another way is to analyze correlations to things so that we can better understand how our morality affects our reality.

So for instance, one could decide, oh, I want to do my analytical meditation on my main mental affliction, and what the antidote to it is supposed to be. Because if I can really get that connection between me and the mental affliction, and me in the behavior I automatically want to do, and me in the behavior that will actually not perpetuate that mental affliction. If I can see how this different behavior relates to the getting rid of the mental affliction, I will have convinced myself that this new behavior is worth doing. Because my habits self says no, it's not. It's in fact, crazy.

I shouldn't act this way. Because that's the way I've always acted. And that's how everybody would act. Right? So yelling boss, we yell back. We think we are right in yelling back. But what really happens, we get yelled at somewhen else.

Then the boss yells again. We thought we are right and now the boss yells again, even harder. We are perpetuating. Until we recognize the antidote to angry bosses, we don‘t know how to behave instead. When we are in the midst of the angry boss yelling experience, it‘s too late to stop and think, What should I do instead?

We work it out in our analytical meditation.

Through the course of our study we learn those 5 mental afflictions. Then we learn in fact there‘s 10 of them. Then later on we learn in fact there is 20 of them.

Actually there is 84.000 of them but if we understand the first 5 and their antidotes, we have everything we need to stop those 84.000, eventually.

So we will go on to learn that material as well.

For instance, if we are a person that has strong ignorant desires. We all have some ignorant desire, but some people are the, Oh I love that. I have to have that-type.

To overcome those mental afflictions, the Lama says, Meditate on those things as they get older and decay and go away. The classical one is the young monch, who can‘t stop thinking about girls. The Lama says, Ok, pick your favorite girl. Be in love with her and fast forward the film until she is fat and ugly and old and then dead and decaying, and watch your desire for her. Then come back to me when you have a different perspective.

Supposedly you have this ignorant desire, we just have to try it on for size. Maybe that‘s not the one that works for you.

We have ignorant desire, we have ignorant disliking, which really means anger, blame, irritation, criticism, fear. All of those things, but it all comes from misunderstanding from where unpleasant things come from and blaming them for my unpleasantness. Curiously the antidote meditation for anger is loving kindness meditations. There is a Lojong, that the premise of it is,put your worst enemy in front of you and repeat over and over again, You poor thing, I love you so much.

The person you just ew, Oh you poor thing, I love you so much.

You say that enough and your anger towards them will go away, they say.

You have to say it a lot. But loving kindness is the antidote to anger and fear.

Curious.

Pride has one. Our very ignorance has one. It‘s the dependent origination—CHI CHEDRAK meditation is the antidote to our misunderstanding our world.

Pride, the opposite practice is honoring and making offerings to others.

Some of these are like, Duh! And others are like, Wow, really?

We will learn them.

Again, in your analytical meditation, they are not all about jumping into the emptiness of something. It‘s learning how to think things through clearly to come to a conclusion.

When we have a mind that we can turn that on with anything under its slide, that‘s when we use it to penetrate it to the no self nature nature of whatever we choose to look at. But we use all these other methods to grow that ability to have the microscope mind.

That will do for tonight. Any questions, comments, needs right now?

Otherwise we will do our dedication.

[Usual closing]

Thank you so much. If any questions come to mind, send them to me please.

Extra Class 6: Q&A

29 February 2024

Link to Eng audio: ACI 3 - Extra Class 6

Welcome back. We are the extra credit meditation classes. Our last one on Feb 29, 2024, oh Leap Day, that’s nice.

[Usual opening]

(7:55) I didn't prepare anything for this class. A few people wrote questions.

I'll answer those questions and see what it sparks, and we'll just see where we go.

How to improve Fixation?

Someone had explained that they're working on their fixation using the image of their teacher. They wanted to know, like, how to really work with that.

Because what they would find would be that they would lose interest and then they would turn their mind to the qualities of the teacher to increase the interest. But instead, it would turn into more like a review meditation and the qualities were gone again and again and again. Then they realized they were losing the image altogether. So they wanted to know, how do we actually do that, and also wanted to know about how to choose a meditation object.

When we're working on our fixation section, say, we really are trying to do a fixation, a review and an analytical in every given session. The fixation part is where we're learning the skill of catching ourselves going off the object earlier, quick, more and more quickly.

Once we have that skill, and we can hold ourselves on the object, we have a certain level of fixation. Then we notice whether the mind is bright, or fascinated, or overly fascinated and we're making those adjustments.

When we're in the early part of our fixation career, and we've got our image there long enough to lose interest—I don't know how long that might take, it might take five or 10 minutes.

If you've been on that object, that whole five or 10 minutes in order to lose interest on it, you're doing pretty well.

If you're on the image with enough fixation, tenacity, that you can notice, you're losing interest, that's also actually a good level. Because you're noticing the factors that are going to lead to losing the object and then we have the opportunity to learn what is it that will increase my interest, increase the quality of my state of mind.

Habitually, our fixation is easily strong when we have an object that we're interested in. But when it's an object we're not interested in it's so much harder to tie ourselves to it. But that's what we're learning to overcome as a meditator. Is rather than relying upon how interested am I in the object to determine our ability to fixate on it, to my attention on the object is turned on when I need it to be on. And it doesn't matter how interesting I find the object.

Can you feel how powerful a tool your mind would be if you could turn that on and off? Just that ability to park on an object that you have no interest in, but need to do so for some reason.

You'll be able to know things about that object. You've heard the stories, where you know, these amazing Lamas, humble is all get out, but amazing, something goes wrong with the car. They don't know anything about car mechanics but they go, Let me look under the hood. And they just zoom in there, whatever and they go, Oh, it's that. And then further they go, I can fix it with my shoelace, watch. Because their concentration is so amazing.

They weren't interested in car engine and how it works. But they had this tool to solve a problem. So we say, when we're training, we do want to have an object that interests us, so that it's easier to focus on the training. An object that we're interested in, if it sits there and does nothing, we're gonna get bored with it.

That's the practice in your fixation session is to recognize, Oh, boredom coming on. And what to do before you get to the point where you have to say, Oh, I've got to go to some other object to get myself bright again.

They say, to bring interest back or to raise dullness, whatever level we're working at, make your visual image brighter. There it is, you're losing interest, like a spotlight could come on it, and your mind will go whoa. It'll wake back up.

Hopefully that's enough to overcome that sense of losing interest. Because the losing interest—my guess—is a dull state of mind coming on, because you've been on the object long enough to recognize, Oh, my gosh, dullness there.

That's actually level 4 and higher, perhaps. Unless the losing interest means no, I'm actually thinking about something entirely different, like the image is gone. Now the image that's coming up is all those bazillion things I have to do before I get to work. Then we've lost the object and the losing interest in the object was the precursor to losing the object altogether.

When we're first starting, we don't notice the losing the object leading to off the object. We just go, Oops, off the object. And we pull it back and we try again.

As we become more on the object longer and more having this watcher’s state of mind—that's actually being developed during sheshin—but once we have some of it, we use it to help our drenpa. You see they come together.

If we're saying, Okay fixation, I'm doing five minutes of fixation, less. You want to hold the object. Try not to go off in order to get back on. But whatever is necessary to increase the interest when the interest wanes, and decrease the urge to jump off of it when that happens.

If our holding the object is strong enough to be able to do that, we'll only recognize when we need to do this, and when we need to do that, once we're in there trying to do it. Then you'll recognize that, Oh my gosh, my object was such and such. But I realized, now I've been thinking about something else. To the extent that the image is gone for visualizers.

You come back, and you reward, and you start again.

Once you're on it long enough to recognize the loss of interest, the dullness coming on, try to just brighten up by making the image sparkle. You're in charge, it's your imagination. Make it sparkle, make it smile. Not get up and run away.

But whatever you need for your mind to go, Oh, I'm interested again.

The danger of relying on the object to do something to increase the interest isn’t really overcoming our natural habit of ‚my concentration depends on the object‘. But we start there.

As we stay on the object easier, we'll find something that we do to brighten our mind. It may have to do with the object like the bright light, we turn on the brighter light. But we won't be coming from the object to keep us at our attention on it.

We just have to explore those experiences in your sessions from day to day, in order to recognize when it's happening. Then once you do, it's like, oh, that's what she's talking about. That's not so hard. Because it really isn't any new skill than we've already used in the course of human life, adjusting our interest on things. Waking up when we're sleepy. We know how to do this. We just haven't ever taken them into our own, when to turn them on and when to turn them off.

Then that person also said, I still don't understand about choosing a meditation object. I think I'll come back to that. Because it ties into what another set of questions that I got, but so far on just this part alone, any comments, any questions, any suggestions for all of us in our effort of training our fixation?

Joana: I would like to know how to work seed wise on this ability also.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, so tell me what you're thinking about seed wise.

Joana: I was trying to get more attention to where I'm interrupting people. Then also with the boredom. Sometimes you're talking about something and you see everybody has shut down. But to also increase the ability, we talked about that it is not enough to have the willpower and really try to force, because then it's really getting tight. I don't know how to increase daily life, this kind of fixation ability, getting it brighter, holding the mind to the object.

Lama Sarahni: I guess I would suggest that we think about using our rejoicing practice to add to the seeds that we already have for being able to concentrate uninterruptedly, that's the fixation where we've already facilitated others to do that. And then recognize how we can add to those seeds by not interrupting in any little way. The rejoicing would be any movie that you've gotten to see while you're in the theater. Have you stayed quiet? Or are you the one whispering to your friend?

If there's been ‚I'm the one whispering‘ then okay, we've got something to four powers. But think of all the other movies or times in a movie where you've been so focused, you're not even aware whether other people are focused or not. But probably they are. If it's a hushed movie theater, wow. There's 100 people or 10 whatever it is, that are a single pointed focused on this movie. Yay. My seeds for that.

In a meeting people paying attention. I paid attention to that person's topic. Yay.

We do have fixation seeds, and to get them to ripe them we recognize them and water them.

Siau Cheng, you have a suggestion for us?

Siau Cheng: No, not really. I have a different question, but I‘ll wait first.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, let's finish this and then I'll come to you. So other suggestions? I have one. Every time you took an exam in school. I'm guessing you had big time fixation. That's a rejoicable. Think of all the other people in class who had big big time fixation. Yay.

What else requires fixation? Training in that new skill. Anybody ever a team sport player? It took the whole team's fixation to get good at playing.

Anybody playing a band? It takes the whole band's fixation on the music to play that whole piece. Rejoicable.

Sheila is a long distance runner. She's got fixation while she's running.

What else can we do off cushion, and can we rejoice off cushion to increase everyone's fixation? Maybe creating a calm atmosphere for others in certain circumstances that they can better fixate or concentrate?

Lama Sarahni: Right.

Claire: To have a calm state of mind like a lake in the mountains. So not to have many actions mind and to have this still awake. So it will come down minds of people around us.

Lama Sarahni: Right. To intentionally be calm and still around others to help them. Nice. Anything else?

Siau Cheng: I always thought that poison to fixation is multitasking. To multitasking you always lose your mind and keep sweeping your mind. So if you're talking to someone, I think, just to put all your attention on someone's conversation and try to be happy about being a good to fix my mind on that conversation. Will be helpful.

Lama Sarahni: Yes, that's good. What you'll find is you'll hear things beyond the words, when you focus that closely on someone's conversation. You'll know things. It's helpful. Not that you're probing into somebody's secret life, but you'll understand them better with that kind of intense listening. You're right, it‘s seeds for being able to intensively listen to our own mind as we would in meditation.

(29:15) Siau Cheng, you had a question?

Yes, I have a question regarding this fixation. I have an inclination that when I find myself is moving away from the meditation object, and to in order to come back again, I always try to refresh the image. In a sense, for example, and focusing on the the image. To some extent, they start to find that I'm moving away from the image. What I do is I just start with a new image, again. I have this this inclination to refresh the memory of the image. Is that correct? Or should I just need to move my mind back to the original image, in a sense, the images are really start to blur out already. So instead of trying to make it brighter, I just start with a new image again, in some sense, in my mind, just, let's start with a new image again.

There is a break away from the previous focus.

Lama Sarahni: But it's the same image, again?

Siau Cheng: Yes, it‘s the same image but I start from the big picture again, and I zoom in again. So when I start from the image, I will look at the big image, for example, the Buddha, the whole Buddha before I zoom into the detail. Then I find that I'm starting to lose my focus. What I tend to do is just start with a new image again, with the whole Buddha again, and then start zooming again. This is this continuation.

Lama Sarahni: Right, in a subtle way, it is a discontinuation. What you might try would be, instead of starting from the outside and going in again, wherever you catch yourself getting to that point where you want to do that, go from there and go back out. You'll end up with the image newly, and then you could come back in. In that way, you're not ever losing the object, even for the instant that it takes to say, Okay, let's start over. So technically, it would be a more fixation fixation than what you were describing. But you'll have to try it on for size.

The thing is, you're noticing that you're reaching a place where you're not going to be able to stay on the object any longer if you don't do something. And that's drenpa getting stronger. Because it's like you've reached the end of your rope and you know, if you just stay like that something's gonna break and you're going to be off. To be able to notice that is a really big step forward in this sequence of being able to stay fixated on the object. Fixated on the object does not mean that the object is absolutely rigid, still doesn't do anything. Now when we're thinking, my object is an image of the Buddha. Images of Buddha's don't do anything. But what we're doing is like watching that image, in anticipation of it doing something. And now the state of mind is, like, if I dull out, or if I look away, that's when they're gonna smile at me, that's when they're gonna blink. That's when they're gonna hand me a diamond.

If I have this sense of anticipation while I'm parked on this image that brightness will hold me on it. Over time, they never do anything. Doggone. We can't keep fooling ourselves like that. But you know what? They're gonna do something. They are.

With that state of mind, you're less likely to even get to the point where, Whoa, I'm going to lose it. It's the adjustment of our quality of attention, and that's that intensity, that we're not really even working on until we get to level 4. But if you're on the object long enough to recognize, Oh, man, I need to refresh it, or I'm gonna lose it. You're on the object long enough to notice a little dullness, a little agitation.

It‘s not so much that you don't work at all with dullness, agitation, until your fixation on the object is on your command. When we're on it long enough to notice, I'm losing interest, then we work with the losing interest.

When I'm on it long enough that I notice I'm getting fuzzy in my detail. That's a really good sign. It's not a bad, it's not a failed meditation at all. It's a good one.

Then we learn how to go the next level.

Siau cheng: Thank you.

How to meditate for 60 min in order to see emptiness directly?

(35:55) Someone asked, knowing Geshe Michael says, We need to be able to meditate for 60 minutes in order to have the meditating power to sustain 20 minutes in the direct perception of emptiness for when the time comes.

They wanted to know when does the clock start ticking on the 60 minutes? And what happens during that 60 minutes? Is that all 60 minutes of fixation, or review or analysis or what? What's that really like?

Technically, the 60 minutes timer doesn't start until we finish our preliminaries.

Then is the start of our actual meditation time. So when we're doing our measuring and increasing by a minute, it's this particular section that that we're doing.

Then, the Scripture says, grow all three trees: the fixation tree, the review tree and the analytical tree at the same time. That would mean, suppose you're up to 30 minutes of your meditation. Then, in that 30 minutes, you decide how much time you want to spend in fixation, how much you want to spend in review, how much you want to spend in analytical.

My own experience started out with five minutes of this 10 minutes of that 10 minutes of that, and then it just got distracting. So rather I developed my own sequence of fixation until I feel like I've made some fixation progress, and then I shift to the review. Just a little bit of review, unless it's a new topic that I would spend longer. And then I would end in using more of my time in the analytical section, which would bring you to an Aha. Which brings you back to a fixation meditation on your Aha.

As fixation becomes more automatic, for instance, you start into your session, and you wiggle around with your on off, you wiggle around with your dullness, agitation, and you settle in level 7, you don't need to stay at fixation at level 7, just because you said I'm going to do 15 minutes of fixation. You can, if you want.

But once we have that skill of getting onto our object, at least at the level of the automatic adjusting, then it's fine to use that state of mind on our review.

We're reviewing at a level 7 state of meditation.

We can't do that until we can reach level 7 on a fixation meditation.

But once we can, we'll hold that level 7, as we recite the Source of all my Good or whatever it is that we're reviewing, those nine principles of a death meditation.

It's a very active thinking, wordy session, part of your session. And it's done with this mind that's bright, fascinated, and not agitated. Not thinking about something else while you're running through the review.

Then you finish your review, and with the same quality of attention, still level 7 if you're there, you then have your predetermined object of analysis. The analysis is, whatever it is you're trying to work out using a logical progression of what you're trying to figure out. Typically, whatever your meditation object has been, or whatever piece of whatever it was that you were reviewing, you're going to choose to look at, like the four laws of karma. You've reviewed them, reviewed them, reviewed them.

In your analytical part, you're going to think about them.

How is it that the laws of karma are empty of self nature, and they still act the same way for everybody? You think about it.

Also a very heady, intellectual applying principles to come to a conclusion, and when you get the Aha, Oh, of course, those principles are empty. That's how they work. We've been working on it in Arya Nagarjuna class. It takes some deep shift in understanding to get to that, Ah. Then with our level 7 concentrating mind, we park on that, Ah, and let it percolate. Then something will happen.

For me, it's the mental talk starts up again. How am I going to describe this to somebody else? How am I going to…? Shut up in there. Get it back again, rest in the Aha.

The way we reach those Aha’s we're being taught, is all of those different ways of proving emptiness. As we learn them, you find one that works for you. The easiest is put different people, different kinds of beings, looking, thinking about your same object and just say, Does everybody perceive this than the same way I do? No.

What does that say about the identity of the object? Doesn't come from it the way I thought. Oh. That's an Aha.

No more discussion necessary: Oh.

How long is that going to last? It fades away. Go back again.

Where do my Lama‘s good qualities really come from? They have to be in them. Everybody sees them that way. Don't they?

Oh, wait. No. But I see them that way. Oh, my gosh. Coming from me, not them. Aha.

Because in that Aha is like, Oh, my gosh, that's true with everything.

What I'm trying to describe is that, when we're first learning, it feels like, here's the fixation part, and then I stop. Here's the review part, and then I stop. Here's the analysis part, and then I stop. It feels like three different meditations.

But when we are applying ourselves to this one hour of meditation goal, that whole thing is a sequence of our meditation, and it all counts towards the 60 minutes.

What we're learning to do is to shift from one to the next, without losing that level of concentration, which if the level of concentration is because of the object, when you shift from your fixation object to your review object, your mind is going to shift and you have to start all over again.

If your quality of attention is your machine that you've oiled and adjusted, and now it's there, it doesn't matter what you slide under the microscope. The microscope doesn't change. Then you can spend 2 minutes in fixation and 5 minutes in review, and all the rest and analytical, or any combination of the above. The whole thing is your meditation. They count towards the 60 minutes.

In one sense, the urgency isn't to get to 60 minutes.

The urgency is to get this trained mind that's independent of the object.

We use a powerful karmic object to do that, because of the increased power of the seeds we plant while we're trying to fixate, adjust for dullness and agitation. The benefit of using an enlightened being as our object, whether it's our fixation object, or our object of analysis, where do their good qualities come from?

The power of the object increases our ability to build that microscope mind that can then penetrate through to the true nature of anything we put under there.

Not even just on our meditation cushion theoretically. Think of how effective you will be come at work when, Here's a project to solve. Alright, slide it under your microscope, penetrate through to where the problem really comes from. Recognize the solution is about those two people getting along better. Which has nothing to do with the project, but you go help those people get along, and the obstacle of the project goes away, says Geshe Michael.

You don't even have to work at the level of the project, if you fix the seeds that are blocking it. And the way we know that is because we've got this tool that can fine tune down to it.

I'm not saying I've got a mind that can do that. But the process of training ourselves in meditation, those skills, start building. It's not like you don't have it until you reach Shamatha. Your mind improves just by the effort. Anywhere along you where you are along your levels of meditation, show benefit in our outer life as well.

Then what we're wanting to do is grow that awareness, the power of the sheshin awareness turned onto our own personal behavior, our morality. As our mindfulness grows, we want it to be ethical mindfulness. Who cares about how mindful we are eating our oatmeal? That it's a good training. But we want to know how mindful am I about my reaction to someone who's just said something that hurts my feelings.

Our time on our cushion helps us off cushion, and our off cushion ethical mindfulness helps us on cushion.

On cushion, it's not about ethics. It's about the quality of mind on the object.

Off the cushion, it's not so much the quality of mind on the object. It's the quality of mind on our next thing out of our mouth, next, behavior.

The two grow together.

So Joana, is your question, a different question, or is it about this? Okay, hang on one minute, I want to finish this string of thought of the person who asked about the what 60 minutes involves.

How to work with the image of my Lama in front of me?

(50:45) They also asked, in the Scripture it said at the setting up our conditions for meditation, we visualize the two lineages of Lamas. If you've seen that Thangka, there's like hundreds of little guys in this image. If you can do that, great.

Whatever number you've got there, what happens to them after, like when you start into your seven limb prayer. Do they all just disappear or what? Because then we see, we're focusing on our own teacher, which was probably in there somewhere, and then up here. Now they're at the foreground. You can let all the rest of those like, not fade away, but go back into the background.

Like your camera, you had the great big wide lens, and then you shorten the focal length or maybe lengthen it, I forget. Then you're zeroing in, you're zooming in. So now the background is all blurred out. You can just think of it that way. You're zooming in onto one of them.

Or, there are other instructions where you take a stage and you just see all of them melt into light and melt into your own teacher. That's useful because then as you're holding your image of your teacher, you're also holding the image of all the teachers, all the lineages. That's a great seed for the future. But for beginners, that's too much.

For someone who hasn't been studying dharma to the extent that you guys have, you wouldn't say, look, visualize all these guys, and then roll them into one. Because it's just too much for Westerners who would be like, That's too weird. So you can just let them fade into the back.

Then there are also these cultural or ritual instructions where, after you have the Lama in front of you, and you've made your offering and done your refuge. Really, even with doing your seven limb prayers, they're in front of you.

Then before you start your actual meditation, you see them rise up and shrink down and turn, and they come and sit on the crown of your head. Some of us have learned that meditation practice as well. And then we're imagining their blessings are pouring into us during our meditation. With our meditation, we just forget them, because we've got something else in our mind. But they're doing that, because we set it up already.

So again, that's one way, when we understand a little bit about the power of the mental seeds we make by doing that. It's a beautiful and useful practice. But for a new Westerner, that might be too odd, too weird. So it isn't necessary.

The teacher that we have in front of us, again, scripturally, they say, Imagine that they're a little bit higher than you, so you're looking up at them. They're gazing down at you with this love.

Too high, and we don't feel connected.

Straight on knee to knee to knee, and our own mind has the habit of thinking we're equal.

So they say, enough higher than you that you can hold this sense of admiration and aspiration. But not so high that they're out of contact out of reach.

But then Geshe Michael says, No, put them knee to knee. Put them right there, hold their hand. Have them be that close to you. There's a beauty in that as well. It keeps us deeply engaged. But for others, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I can't be that close. Until some days, it's like, oh, I'm ready to be that close.

We can try it on for size later on.

It isn't really a you have to do it this way or that way. Whatever helps you feel the most connected to them.

If they're a living person that you get to see from time to time, or if they're not appearing in the flesh, and you've got this visualized image ideal: Wherever you feel you have the most personal connection that doesn't threaten you. But also doesn't feel like you're praying to somebody out of reach, who's far away. You want them close by.

Explore, see what feels the best. And then stay with that for a while.

How to keep contact to our Holy Being throughout the day?

(57:00) Then that person asked, how do we keep contact with our Holy Being during the course of our regular day when we're so distracted with life and things?

Where do we leave them? Where are they? Do they go back to heaven so they're out of reach again while I'm at work, or how do I stay connected?

At the end of our sessions, we always offer our goodness, see them accept it and bless it, and they carry it with them right back into our hearts.

We have this holy being inside that holy of holies in the middle of our chest. It's not in your heart organ. It's in that space in the middle of your chest.

Inside there, they're full size. From the outside looking in they are the size of a head of a pin. They're inside your heart, and they're outside and everywhere else at the same time. But the one inside your heart is the one you have access to at any time you need.

Our task is just remembering that they're there.

So we cultivate this sense of: They're there with me. Their love is there with me. Their direction is there with me. Their guidance is there with me.

But they can't make us follow their guidance. They can't make us listen. They can't even make us remember they're in there.

They're just hanging out waiting for us to go, Oh, hi. Can you help me?

They'll say with what?

The idea is, as that relationship with them gets more real for you, it will occur to you now and then to ask them. Like, is this really the best? Is this really?

What's next?

Say you have to make a decision, and you just tune in. What would be for the highest and best? And then listen. Maybe you won't get words, maybe you will. But you'll get a sense.

And that sense, our automatic reaction to that sense—for me was so often, Nah.

But when I overcame the ‚Nah‘ and acted on that anyway, the problem that I was trying to solve would just dissolve away.

It usually requires a willingness to step into that which I was avoiding, that I asked about. And when I get this confirmation of „Do it“, willingness to do it. Knock on wood, I almost never had to. Because something about that surrendering to their guidance was enough to shift the seeds of the whole conflict, the whole problem to begin with. If I hadn't thought to check in, I would have just made my own decision and pushed my way through, and probably avoided something that would then stay in there and have to come out in some bigger way.

It's the tuning in.

We learn, in the monastic training they say the young monk is only allowed to brush their teeth and go to the bathroom without asking their Lama first.

Everything else, they go to their house Lama and say, What next? And they get direction.

It seems like well, how is the kid ever going to grow up to make their own decisions? But what they're actually learning to do is to tune in to wisdom at each change in action.

Imagine: Okay, it's time to get out of bed. Should I get out of bed? Yes. Okay.

Time to meditate. Should I meditate? No, the neighbor needs help.

It's like, no, no, I meditate. But inside, The neighbor needs help.

If I listen, I get up and I go check on the neighbor.

What if they didn't need help? Then I think Oh, oops.

But maybe as I was walking across the street, the very fact that I was going to help them solved their problem. You don't know, right?

The act of hearing and following the advice is really a powerful karmic seed.

But not if the advice is, Go steal the neighbor's dog, because it's barking all the time. The voice cannot say to you something that's harmful to yourself or others, and that is not the guide’s voice. That's ego.

It takes some discrimination as well, to know who it is that's giving you the answer when you're asking.

It's our exploration of that that grows it for us.

Do you know anyone who already does that? Either anyone in history, or anyone around you who already tunes in to their own higher power, or God or Jesus or mother Mary or whoever? There are many around us who are already doing this in their own beautiful, sweet way. We have the seeds to do it too, if we see it in our world. Honoring them and rejoicing in them will grow our ability to do it too.

Let's take our break, and then we'll come to Joana's question.

(Break)

How to guide the mind through review and analytical meditation?

(64:40) Joana: My question was about this what you explained first, from the previous question of the other person with this 60 minutes. That we have to grow all the 3 abilities. And since you explained that in class, I found it really helpful thing to do. Before that I was only doing either review, or analysis. Now to split it to all the three parts is really helpful, and yet very, very challenging for me. Because I distract myself much more that way. And there's two parts of my question.

The first one is with the review. So sometimes I try to think about, for example, the source of all my code, one verse, and I try to get deeper into the question. So how do I live that? How do I understand that? And then I hit some wall, and I can't get deeper. And then from that point on, I'm circling in my mind, it's always the same thought that I have. Then I kind of get impatient, and I think I should go back to the text, I should get back to the class, try to learn more. So it's not really the review anymore. I'm not kind of getting more deeper insights. I kind of get stuck there.

And from then on, it's getting like there's not any review meditation going on anymore.

Lama Sarahni: Right. So the purpose of the review is to learn it. It's to learn the sequence, or to learn the 9 steps of death meditation, or to learn the 13 steps of the cause and effect, exchanging self and others, Bodhichitta. You're learning it. So that you would know the steps even if you started in the middle, or at the beginning, or from the back. So really, it's going through it again and again, with just catching the moving from one verse to another, how they're connected. But not really analyzing. Stopping to analyze during your review makes your review an analytical meditation. Alright? To review is just doo, doo, doo, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee dee dee, right? It's pretty dry. Which is why I would do that at the beginning of my session and get it out of the way.

I don't actually do reviews anymore, I admit.

So just make your review more dry. And then do your analysis of that first verse. And then you just chew on it and think about it, and misunderstand it, and misunderstand a little more. You don't have to come to a „Okay, I've got it“.

You just analyze, analyze, analyze. You will come to a „Oh, I see“. Or you'll come to a „Oh, I don't see“. And that's okay too. To just park on it's not all that that I think it is. It's something else. You can use a part of your, what you're reviewing as your analytical if you want.

Joana: Okay. And then the second part that I have, is this resting in the Aha. So I'm doing the analysis. And there's, for example, what you said, think about different perspectives. So then you see, it cannot be other than the thing I'm looking at. This would be a kind of Aha feeling. But then it's, I always go in my mind, I always go forward and not resting enough. It's like, okay, so then of course, then I have to think about the dependent origination. How did it come to be like that from my side. Then there is some Aha, but I'm not resting. So somehow, my mind always wants to go further. Is there anything you can advise?

Lama Sarahni: Shut up in there.

My mantra: Om, Shut up in there, ah hung.

Yeah, try, just try. I don't know how to do it. Because it's just a feeling. And you're trying to hold that feeling, without describing it. Is very difficult. Which is why we need the skill of fixation on anything we put under the microscope.

Joana: But that would be part of the analytical meditation part to go from one Aha, rest there, and then go further to the next step of analysis and then try to..

Lama Sarahni: Yes.

Joana: Okay. So it's not one Aha and get out?

Lama Sarahni: No. Okay, got it?

How to use a mental affliction as meditation object?

(70:35) Okay, Lian Sang, you had a question. I didn't see the whole thing.

Lian Sang: This is related to the last class that you, I think I watched the video and you were mentioning that we could actually use the meditation as a way to kind of get to the antidote. Can convince ourselves on the antidote of our afflictions.

So to the last event that I attend, I mean, normal days, things are okay, sleep well, and then don't have all those anxiety and fear coming up. But in the situation where by having to live with many people in the same room, all these problems all come up. It’s like, Wow, so many, very, very, very afflicted, very, very afflicted.

I totally I get to the exact affliction. It‘s just a symptom manifesting in that you see a lot of anxiety living in a big group and maybe even fear also coming up. So I'm actually trying to think maybe I could use the meditation as a way to kind of like get to the root of what exactly is this affliction? Is it fear? Is it anxiety? What is it that anxiety is about so that I can get to the antidote? So I‘m asking for advice. How can I use this affliction as an meditation object, and get to the root of the problem? Because I think it's recurring. It's recurring when I'm in a big group that this seems to be coming up very frequently.

Lama Sarahni: Right. Yeah. Good.

There's a practice called the four close recollections. I can't pull out of the card catalog exactly where they come up. But it's a practice where we are closely recollecting our physical body, closely recollecting our feeling—meaning up, down, neutral—,closely recollecting our mind—meaning our consciousnesses—, and then the fourth one is closely recollecting all existing things.

It's not that you do all of them in one session. You work on the close recollection of body for some period of time until your relationship with your physical body shifts. Because your understanding of its actual identity, its actual existence, becomes more clear. Then you do the same with feelings and awareness.

I'm just pulling that up, because it speaks to using as our meditation object our physical body.

It‘s like, Well, wait a minute, that's not a holy object, that's not going to be very powerful.

But when our motivation for doing the meditation is our Bodhichitta: I'm wanting to really deeply identify this thing I'm calling anxiety, and what it really is, where it really comes from, so that I can stop all anxiety in every person in the world. And to do that, I'm going to use this anxiety that this one feels, you do become a powerful karmic object for your world.

So, one sets their motivation intention very strongly.

Do your usual preliminaries. In your preliminaries what you would be offering to that Holy Being would be any ways in which you had helped someone calm their anxiety, or you chose a different interaction with somebody in order to prevent or reduce their anxiety. You target your seven limbs to what you're going to be working on, over the course of some period of time.

Then for your purification, you purify any way in which you contributed to somebody's anxiety. Thinking specifically, well, I didn't agitate anybody that I know of, but I realize I walked by that flock of birds, and they were like whoa. So I did actually cause some fear and distress in somebody else. And our mind says, I can't possibly not do that. But we could have. I regret.

Then in your rejoicable, go back to other ways that you see people being calm around upset people.

Grow your ability to work with your own anxiety in your seven limbs.

Then, when you're ready to go into your checking that out, you recall a situation where that anxiety is arising. It's like you're playing the movie, you can stop the movie anytime. You can turn the movie off anytime. So you know that you're safe in this session, because you're in charge.

What you're wanting to do is to kind of get back into that place where those feelings are arising, in order to look at them, identify them more clearly.

Anxiety is too broad a category to be able to fix. So you start with going into your physical body, and just looking. When I'm feeling this thing I'm calling anxiety, what does it feel like in here? Is it chest tightness? Is it shortness of breath? Is it going to clamp the road? Is it churning belly? Is it back pain? Is it all of the above? Where do I feel it?

One way to start working with that is to get into those feelings. Allow yourself to feel the discomfort of those feelings, of those physical sensations. And ask yourself, what message is this giving me? Is it fear? Am I afraid I'm gonna get trampled on?

Is it mistrust? Is it… I don't know. My needs won't get met? Is it…?

You just keep asking? Really mentally feeling the feeling and trying to give it a label.

And this label, it'll be like No, that label No.

Then you'll come up with a label and know. Your body goes, That's it.

Then you've got a more clearly defined what that anxiety is.

Say it's fear. Fear is also too big to work with. Fear of what? So you again, keep asking, keep exploring. I like to use, What's the worst that can happen here? Because that story will usually show me what it is that I'm trying to protect myself from when I'm in a situation that's bringing the anxiety. What's the worst that could happen? Oh my gosh, that could steal my purse, rape me and leave me for dead.

In which case, those are the emotions I would want to work with, those would be the circumstances. Why could I possibly have those kinds of fears? Understanding karma and emptiness, it happens in my world.

Why does it happen in my world and I know about it.

Where is that coming from? Have I ever done it in this like no way?

Would I ever do it in this life? Good god I don't think so.

So why is it coming up now? Ah, some past life awfulness that I really regret, and I for sure won't do in any way here.

Probably there are other people that are equally concerned. So I myself want to radiate a safety so that anybody around me feel safe around me.

Even if I don't feel it yet. When I get off my cushion, I'm gonna do my best to radiate safety. Even as I'm like, Ew I can't be here.

Because of our understanding, karmic seeds ripening and nothing but, really my fear is based on a situation that's not even happening. It's just seeds being triggered from before. Now I understand them better. I understand what the opposite behavior would be. And I will try to help others using that opposite behavior.

But it all starts with letting ourselves feel it, and then analyze it.

Analyze by way of checking it up, ask questions, feel the different feelings as we try on different answers to the questions. And I think you'll come to see that how anxieties got different parts to it: About our own safety, others behaviors towards us, our expectations of others. There'll be lots of pieces. You'll find the one that, Oh, that answers it all. When you get that, you'll be able to work with it by way of applying the opposite.

Not the opposite to how you feel at the moment. But the opposite to the seeds that made how you feel at the moment. Does that make sense?

In Master Shantideva, I'm thinking it's course 11, there was a teaching about how when you overcome all pride, the result is you become completely independent, not meaning self existent.

When you overcome all stinginess, you become abundant beyond belief.

When… right? How these opposites work. Then somewhere else in that teaching, it taught, the opposite of pride is honoring others needs. Like taking care of others needs is the opposite of pride. We wouldn't think that. We would think humility is the opposite of pride.

But pride means: my needs are most important.

Then that evolves into: I'm better than you, pride.

But the underneath is: my needs are more important.

So a prideful person underneath is afraid they're not going to get their needs met.

So putting helping others get their needs met overcomes pride that might be manifesting as the fear of getting our needs met. It’s arising when we're in a big crowd, and if we don't push our way to the front, you don't know for sure that you're gonna get to the bathroom in time. Right? All those things.

Then jealousy and ill will. They have to do with: they're getting what I want. Jealousy.

Then ill will is: somebody somebody's not getting what they want, and we're happy about it.

Curiously, the antidote to jealousy and ill will is to imagine those beings to whom we are jealous or ill willing, we imagine them as somehow higher than us and we make offerings to them. Like to offer to the beings that were jealous of and ill will of is what overcomes jealousy and ill will. We just don't think of that.

What's the difference between giving something to someone and honoring someone, offering to someone? It's just the attitude with which we are doing it.

We give to someone who's below us or equal to us. But we offer to someone who we admire and see as someone higher than us. Which is why offering to someone we're jealous of is almost impossible. Because we're jealous of them. Right? We want to put them below us. But instead of, Wow, you are holy being here teaching me, giving me an opportunity to overcome my own jealousy. Right, cup of coffee for you. Same as giving, same thing, but our own attitude is different. Like I'm talking to myself more than you. The anger and fear go to together: the blame factor—they're doing that to me. What's the one from the throat chakra?

Wrong discrimination: seeing things the wrong way.

Ignorant liking and then wrong morality, wrong way of seeing. Those are a little bit harder to work with. I think that gives you something to go on. Does it?

Lian Sang: Yes. Thank you.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. Good. Once you figure that out yourself, what a great tool you have to help others. This is how I did it. This is what worked. Let me help you do it. Good. Nice. Thanks for that question. It's really helpful.

Anything else?

Roxana from Mexico, she is in the morning group. She said: can we do a retreat together where we just explore these 7 levels and put together a personal practice? Can‘t we?

Yes sure. Put it together. A week later she came back to me, „I have a place in Mexico city. When can we do it?“

We are cooking the idea of doing a group meditation where we are trying to explore these 7 levels and what they feel like. Stay tuned. I‘ll let you know. It‘s going to happen.

[Usual closing]

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