Techniques for the Meditation Session and the
Break
Lama Thubten Yeshe
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Contents
Think, “Why is my uncontrolled mind so strongly tied
to this uncontrolled body? Why has my uncontrolled mind been
associated with this sense-driven body for such a long time?
It seems that my entire internal environment is totally agitated.
When I was a child, I used other people; I made them work
to take care of me, of my body. Now that I’ve grown,
I myself have to expend great effort just to keep this body
alive. Even such a simple thing as getting a job can be so
difficult. If I didn’t have this uncontrolled body,
I wouldn’t even need a job. And because of the association
of uncontrolled body and mind, I’m tied to the tiny
atoms of my material existence. All these problems come from
the deep root of attachment and ego mind. My ego binds me
to conditions and gives me no chance to experience internal
peace, freedom and joy.”
While I’m speaking, check what I’m saying; practice
analytical meditation. Instead of allowing your senses to
be preoccupied with other objects, pay full attention to what
I’m saying and contemplate its meaning. Don’t
listen to Dharma with the attitude of a child in school.
If you cannot control your body for a short time—even
an hour—if you cannot relax physically, your nervous
system will not be relaxed. If your nervous system is not
relaxed, your mind will not be relaxed and that will prevent
you from seeing reality or experiencing inner peace. When
your mind is relaxed, your nervous system becomes the kind
of spacious, peaceful environment that knowledge-wisdom needs
to grow. You don’t have to strain yourself; there is
a gentler method.
Even when your knee hurts, it’s not as bad as you
think—your ego exaggerates the pain. It solidifies the
feeling, makes it feel unchangeable, like iron. This is a
totally wrong conception, a completely unrealistic interpretation.
If you can realize this, the pain will be digested by your
wisdom and disappear. Why? Because the pain you feel in your
knee does not arise by itself but in combination with ego
activity. When one of these elements disappears, the combination
also disappears.
You don’t have to exert yourself to enjoy good meditation.
Simply close your eyes, relax completely, and let your mind
just watch. Don’t expect bad thoughts to arise; don’t
expect good ones either. Just let go and observe how thoughts
come, how thoughts go; how pain comes, how pain goes; how
the agitated mind comes, how it goes. Just watch. Check up,
“Where is this agitation I feel?” “What
is this agitation I’m experiencing?” When you
check up with analytic wisdom, agitation automatically disappears.
It goes away by itself because agitation is neither flesh
nor bone; it is not a physical thing. Agitation is just an
expression of mind.
When you meditate, ignore your sense perceptions; don’t
pay attention to sights, sounds, smells, tangibles or tastes.
Keep your eyes lightly closed; the meditating mind is not
sense perception. Sense perception is blind; it is not an
intelligent mind. Let your mind be totally open and aware.
When your mind reaches beyond pain, let it rest there.
When you focus your attention on the subjective mind that
feels, the object of the feeling disappears. Let your mind
remain there; don’t concentrate on the feeling itself.
The wandering mind
If your mind gets distracted by external objects, focus
on your breath. Breathe in deeply and completely through your
nose, bringing your breath energy all the way down below your
stomach to your navel. Push down gently with your diaphragm.
Then tighten the muscles around your sex chakra—your
internal, lower pelvic muscles. Draw the energy up from below
and feel it meet the energy you have pushed down from above
at a point about four fingers’ breadth below the level
of your navel and hold your breath. Touch that point with
your finger to bring your mind’s attention to that precise
spot. Feel a joyful sensation there. Your mind will automatically
focus on that point. Concentrate on that sensation.
When you do this meditation, hold your breath for as long
as is comfortable, then exhale naturally, slowly and completely,
but leave your mind concentrated on feeling.*
Do this five times. Breathe in; push down a little; hold
your breath below the navel; tighten the lower muscles; feel
the energy rise from below to meet the energy from above;
focus your concentration there, just below your navel.
When these two energies meet at that point just below your
navel they generate a kind of electrical energy. Light radiates
from there and spreads throughout your entire nervous system.
Without grasping, feel totally blissful. Concentrate on
that feeling of bliss. Unify your mind with bliss. Let your
mind sink into that feeling; don’t feel separate from
it by thinking, “I am feeling blissful.”
The dull mind
If your mind gets sluggish or sleepy, try to focus on the
light energy just below your navel; visualize it getting clearer,
brighter and more radiant. Your foggy mind will disappear.
The view of the foggy, sluggish mind tends to be dark. When
you visualize light, the sluggish mind automatically disappears.
This is not just some hallucination. There’s already
electric light energy within your body. When the air energy
pushed down from above mingles with the energy pulled up from
below, that electric light is activated.
This is not religious dogma; it’s scientific experience.
Inhale slowly and deeply; bring the breath energy all the
way down below your navel; push down a little; tighten the
lower muscles; bring the energy up from below to meet the
energy from above, just below the navel. From that point,
electric light energy radiates throughout your entire nervous
system—into your heart, your throat, your brain; into
your legs, knees and feet. Feel the total unity of the electric
light energy. Dwell in that blissful feeling of unity and
light.
When you meditate, keep your mouth gently closed. Breathe
only through your nose.
Session breaks
When it’s time to break, get up from your seat slowly,
with awareness. When you walk, link your fingers gently in
front of you instead of letting your arms swing all over the
place. Relax, but walk with awareness of your feelings. Go
to the toilet or do whatever you have to do and return with
awareness of your feelings. It’s all meditation. Walking
is meditation; sitting down is meditation. Everything becomes
meditation. Meditation does not necessarily mean sitting in
some corner, doing nothing. Your walking can be totally conscious;
that, too, is meditation.
Now take a break as I’ve described. Return slowly.
Pay attention to your inner feelings but don’t forget
the blissful feeling below your navel.
[Session break]
Don’t expect your concentration on feeling to be perfect,
like hitting a nail on the head.
Externally, relax. Internally, be mindful. When a distracting
thought arises, watch with penetrating, mindful wisdom how
your ego mind identifies this thought, how it reacts. Be fully
aware. When the thought object disappears, let your mind rest
without thoughts.
When the memory of a past, pleasurable experience arises,
observe mind-fully how your ego mind identifies this thought,
how it grasps at it.
Instead of rejecting this memory, just allow yourself to
feel. When you try to feel, the memory will digest itself
and simply disappear. When your mind reaches beyond grasping
at the memory of this pleasant experience, just let it stay
there.
When the memory of a past, unpleasant experience arises,
perhaps bringing guilt or depression, watch with mindful wisdom.
Observe how your ego mind rejects this experience.
You can see that instead of facing the feeling of this bad
experience and wanting to know its nature, your ego mind immediately
wants to escape from it.
When the ego mind sees a desirable experience, it is magnetically
drawn towards it—but it doesn’t want to investigate
the reality of that experience. When a bad experience arises,
the ego mind immediately wants to run away. To the ego mind,
even one minute of bad experience can feel like a year. According
to the nature of that experience, such reactions are unrealistic,
but for countless lives we have accumulated the imprints of
such reactions in our mind. Therefore, our minds are unbalanced,
out of equilibrium and automatically agitated. We call such
minds dualistic—they make judgments according to superficial
imagination rather than actual reality.
The ego mind paints its own picture onto reality and we
then judge “good” or “bad” on the
basis of this hallucination. Our ego mind cheats us by projecting
its own hallucinated view of reality, in which we believe.
If your mind reaches beyond the memory of either bad or
good experiences, let it dwell in that state and let go.
Thus, you can see that the guilty mind is a manifestation
of ego, not wisdom.
You don’t have to strain to control your mind. Just
be wise; try to under-stand and identify how your ego functions.
With understanding, control comes automatically and your mind
becomes healthy and happy. Control of the mind is a natural
thing, not artificial.
During session breaks, try to remain as mindful as possible.
Even if you love your friend, be wise. Check whether your
chatter helps your friend or not; will that conversation make
your friend truly happy? If the answer is yes, of course,
talk away. But be wise. Ask yourself how you want to help
your friend; try to determine the best way of helping. Don’t
think, “If I don’t talk to her, she’ll freak
out.” What freaks out is the silly mind, the ego. The
realistic mind won’t freak out. That’s good. Let
the ego freak out. Then you’ll easily recognize it.
Isn’t what I’m saying true? We always want to
help our friend, but usually our ignorant mind only makes
our friend more agitated; instead of helping, we disturb.
Therefore, be especially careful in retreat. If you want to
discuss some disturbing mind for the purpose of psychological
treatment, it is obviously worthwhile to talk, but if you
just want to engage in some emotional conversation, it’s
a waste of time.
Thus, session breaks become a kind of session. It depends
on your mind. Session breaks can definitely become meditation
sessions and it’s most worthwhile for you to try to
make them so.
In Tibet, we always used to emphasize how important it was
to be careful not to allow old habits to surface during the
session break. Otherwise, it’s like trying to clean
a room by simply pushing the dirt from one side to the other.
If you remain mindful during the break, when the next session
starts you can go straight into your meditation without any
distraction.
Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank
you.
*Note: Here Lama is referring to the mental
factor of feeling as one of the meditation objects of the
four foundations of mindfulness—mindfulness of body,
feeling, mind and phenomena. You can simply remain in mindful
awareness on feeling or engage in analysis of it: is it pleasant,
unpleasant or neutral? Is it permanent or impermanent? And
so forth. See Practicing
Wisdom, Chapter 9, for Shantideva’s approach
to meditating on selflessness via the four mindfulnesses.
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