In the first morning session, before breakfast, do the sadhana from beginning to end. It should take about an hour and a quarter. So start off with sessions of about that length and then gradually extend them as the retreat progresses. That’s the Tibetan style: start with short sessions, then, depending on how your meditation is going, make them longer. But don’t spend too much time on mantra recitation; one mala should be enough. Your main emphasis should be on developing concentration.

In the second session, instead of starting at the very beginning of the sadhana, start with the main body of the yoga method, with meditation on shunyata, self-generation, one mala of mantra recitation and dedication. Do the rest of the sessions in the same way.

Also, I strongly recommend that you maintain silence, at least until midday. That’s the way to experience strong transformation. Otherwise, if you just blah, blah, blah to each other all day, you’ll simply dissipate whatever energy you’ve gained.

Buddhism is very simple and practical. We need to transform our body, speech and mind, and the meditations in the yoga method are set up to facilitate this transformation. We transform our flesh and blood body into the clear light nature of Maitreya’s body; our utterly nonsensical speech, which is usually symptomatic of ego, into the pure energy of mantra, free of dualistic games; and our garbage thoughts into Maitreya’s universal love and non-dual wisdom. These are the three things we need to do.

In between sessions, there’s a break. From the Tibetan point of view, the session break is just as important as the session, if not more. After you’ve cleaned your room you don’t turn around and throw dirt all over it; similarly, after you’ve purified yourself during the session you don’t want to fill your mind with more garbage.

Therefore be mindful. During the breaks continue to recognize yourself as Maitreya, with a radiant golden body in the nature of universal love and compassion, and to see other people in the same way as well. If you can maintain this kind of awareness there’s no way that superstition can arise.

Also, eat and drink mindfully, recognizing the nature of whatever you ingest as the universal love and wisdom of Maitreya—everything you eat and drink causes incredibly blissful energy to explode in your nervous system, like throwing gasoline on a fire. Every meal fills you with indescribable bliss.

The main emphasis of tantra is on the experience of satisfaction and bliss. Tantra is the path to complete psychological satisfaction. Along the way, your mind automatically becomes focused, incisive and clear.³⁰  

Sleeping

You can sleep in one of two ways but first of all make sure you’re comfortable. From the tantric point of view, sleeping well is good, eating well is good. So sleep very comfortably. Some people’s beds are very uncomfortable; I don’t see the point of that. Be comfortable. There’s no use in making life harder than it already is.

When I first came to the West I was shocked by how soft the mattresses were; I couldn’t lie flat. Now my students know that I need a firm bed. For me, soft beds are very uncomfortable, but I think the fashion’s now changing in favor of hard beds. In the seventies, everybody wanted a soft bed.

The first way to sleep is to transform into Maitreya, lie down in the lion position³¹ and go to sleep like that. Buddhism considers this a very profound way to sleep because it’s the way Lord Buddha slept and passed away. Don’t sleep flat on your back or on your stomach unless it’s for medical reasons. If you die in your sleep in the wrong position it can adversely affect your rebirth because your nervous system isn’t working properly. Sleeping is also part of the path to enlightenment.

You usually hear some sounds when you awaken—instead of thinking of them as ordinary, imagine that they’re the sound of mantra coming from space to wake you up. When you bathe and dress, again see yourself in the clear light nature of Maitreya and offer yourself a bath and clothes. Of course, Maitreya doesn’t need to wash, but we offer him a bath in order to clean our dualistic mind. When you have breakfast, again offer your food and drink to yourself as Maitreya and experience bliss as I mentioned before.

During the day, a good technique to employ whenever you’re in a situation where anger is likely to arise is to emanate as Maitreya. This is an excellent way of controlling anger. If you’re going into a situation where you know you’re likely to get angry, first manifest strongly as Maitreya. If you do, there’s no way you’ll get angry.

In fact, the light of Maitreya’s radiant golden body is particularly powerful in stopping the symptoms of any delusion because all destructive emotions arise from darkness and lack of clarity. The golden light is wisdom, which always energizes sensitivity and awareness.

The second way of sleeping goes like this. Generate yourself as Maitreya, lie in the lion position and visualize all living beings and their environments—everything in the universe—melting into light and sinking into you. Then you, Maitreya, gradually dissolve into light from your feet up, finally absorbing into the mantra and moon disc at your heart. The moon disc and mantra dissolve into the syllable hum, the hum dissolves from below up and disappears into non-dual wisdom, and you go to sleep in emptiness. Thus sleep again becomes the path to enlightenment. When you wake in the morning, meditate strongly on the shunyata experience and arise from it as Maitreya.

Group retreat

In the future, in my absence or that of another teacher, I think it would be good for Maitreya Institute to organize retreats on this yoga method. Personally, I also think it would be all right for people who have not had the initiation to join such retreats. Because this is Maitreya Institute we can make the exception that people can practice Maitreya without initiation. There would be much benefit from that. In Tibet we did have the system where people without initiation could join a group deity yoga retreat but not do the practice individually. Also, you have tapes of this commentary and senior students to lead the meditations, so it should be easy.

You should also organize other deity yoga retreats, such as Chenrezig and lamrim retreats as well. The point is to try to benefit others as much as possible. Retreats are very useful in restoring people’s energy and helping them become strong.

Prostrations

As long as you’re healthy it’s good to do strong prostrations in retreat but if you’re not then it’s better not to. However, we do need healthy bodies, so instead of doing nonsensical kinds of exercise it’s better to do prostrations, which are very powerful. Firstly, touching the ground itself is healing, but prostrations are also very helpful psychologically, because our ego doesn’t ever want to admit it’s wrong. Even when we make an obvious mistake we can’t accept somebody’s pointing it out.

So we have to train our mind in humility and making prostrations is a way of doing so, of making space in our mind to accept things, good or bad. It’s very important that we have the space in our mind to say, “Yes, you’re right,” when somebody says, “You made a mistake.” Making mistakes is as much a part of being human as is doing the right thing. So prostrations are important.

We should also understand that when we make prostrations we’re not making them to the material objects on the altar—the statues, thangkas, photographs and so forth—but to the universal love, compassion and understanding of non-duality of which they’re a manifestation. We know how incredibly beneficial these enlightened qualities are, so we prostrate to them, not the physical atoms that represent them. Be sensible—prostrating to mere material atoms doesn’t make any sense at all.

So every time we see the holy objects on the altar and bring to mind the profound qualities and achievements they symbolize—Maitreya’s enlightened universal love, compassion and wisdom—we receive a great impression in our mind.

Of course, if we don’t have the mad elephant characteristics of self-pity pride in our mind we don’t need to make prostrations, but most of us are probably not at that level. Also, prostrations constitute an integral part of the preliminary practices,³² so it’s certain that beginners like us need to do them.

The way to practice is to do some actual meditation, like on the graduated path to enlightenment or deity yoga, then some preliminary practice to elevate the mind a little, then some more actual meditation, then some more preliminary practice and so forth. We should use all the resources at our disposal to develop our mind.

At the same time, we should not hold the fanatical view that we can’t attain enlightenment without making prostrations. That’s wrong, too. I’m just extolling the virtues of prostrations because I have found them to be very helpful in my life in general and in subduing my ego in particular.

 NOTES

³⁰ See Becoming Vajrasattva for detailed group and individual retreat instructions. [Return to text]

³¹ Lie on your right side, cradle your head in the palm of your right hand and lay your left arm straight down your left side to your thigh. “Reclining Buddha” statues usually show him in the lion position. [Return to text]

³² There are nine preliminary practices in the Gelug tradition: prostration, mandala offering, refuge, Vajrasattva, guru yoga, water-bowls, Samayavajra, tsa-tsas, and Vajradaka fire puja.[Return to text]