Lessons

Lesson Info

Introduction - Why Meditate?

if you're at home, what you're gonna want to have is is one, you know, some setup where you're gonna be able to do some sitting meditation with us uh which could be cushions uh in in the form of a flat cushion and a seated cushion like we haven't here. Um if you don't have that, just take a pillow or something off the couch. Uh if you're comfortable sitting cross legged on the floor and we will be jumping right into that, so we'll be actually doing that practice starting in the second segment. So you're gonna need that if you are not comfortable sitting that way on the floor on a cushion, it's completely legit uh to sit on the chair. Some people worry, oh I'm not, I can't possibly be doing it right if I'm sitting on a chair, but there's actually um statues of the future buddha, Maitreya buddha who's sitting on a chair portrayed is sitting on a chair. So I always say that to people, you can, you can say I'm doing it the right way here. Uh so sitting on a chair is fine. I'll be talking m...

ore about the posture as we go along and I think also you might want to uh take notes um so that you can keep track of things that are important to you uh in terms of what we talk about, so you might need a notebook or a pad or your, you know, if your digital and you want to use your laptop, that's fine. Uh so just make sure you have those few things available otherwise, um you also need your body and your mind. So hopefully you brought those with you because the body we have to bring sometimes the mind, we left behind something at the last gig, you know, But just to talk a little bit in the beginning about, you know, the whole framework of why would you even want to consider taking some of your precious valuable life and spend it in this way? And so from one point of view, you can look at your life as a form of currency, you have a certain amount of time, a certain amount of energy, right? That's what we have. Um then we have our circumstances which vary from person to person, but within that we all have a certain amount of time and energy. How are we going to spend that? So, uh I wanted to talk about meditation from the point of view of how it fits how it sits into the rest of life and what's the value of it to to to our full existence, not as some esoteric activity, you know that um you go off and meditate and somehow it's completely separate and distinct from your work as a lawyer. Um you know, your family life as as people have talked about or your own personal sense of well being, you know, so the analogy I wanted to start having a look at is the notion of training, you know, which is kind of across the board applies to a lot of different things. People train to become good at something, right? So, and for whatever reason the body training is very popular in this country, in the United States that we live in. So, um people don't have much of a time, uh why should I bother training my body, you know, getting in shape and pretty much most of us in january has a big bump in the curve of sales of gym memberships and things like that. People go, you know, I want to get in shape. So of course we have some idea of working with our body in a disciplined way, um but ironically if you talk about training the mind, um it gets kind of egg right there and yet arguably I would argue and I think my um teachers would argue the mind is a very potent component of our, of our daily life. So even though somewhat invisible and intangible, if for example, you think of any physical activity like um basketball player running down the court, obviously you have to be in shape, but you know, all of them are equally in shape, but who are the great players are the ones who are kind of using the mind in a very sharp and clear way, right? Which is something you said alright, some kind of clarity and sharpness. So the meditation practices a form of discipline, it's not hocus pocus, it's not woo woo. In the buddhist tradition we look at qualities like wisdom and compassion is being natural to people native intrinsic, you know? And all we're doing is kind of polishing, you know, So we believe that people are basically good, fundamentally good, and you look around, it's hard to argue with that, really, if I'm just looking around this room right now, you know, and so it's not so much a question of punishing ourselves or taking on some kind of, you know, aesthetic discipline. So you were bad. So you can beat yourself up more and feel better. This is the ground of this practice is actually being very friendly towards oneself, very open, developing kind of warmth and compassion, and at the same time a certain level of precision about uh working with the uh quality of how our mind operates. I'm coming here from a certain training myself, you know, that was that I underwent. And uh, it's very unusual in a way the time that we're living in, because I got to study with tibetan buddhist meditation masters without ever leaving the United States. So that was my quirky karma, if you will. and in 1970 I was at the Berklee College of Music in boston massachusetts and studying a little bit of yoga on the side and uh, I happened to meet uh, choke him trump who was my teacher. And it was an accident just like this is an accent. I have no idea how I end up being here with you all today. Write is this sort of a lot of the things in our life just kind of come together if you can relax in a certain way, it, you realize you're in the right place at the right time. So, um, my teacher was a very unusual teacher in that he was a sort of, I completely trained in Tibet under a very rigorous uh system of, of training meditators that's very ancient. You know, his lineage goes back the 1200 years, you know, you can track all the teachers who gave, so there's a tremendous emphasis on kind of direct personal communication from teacher to student uh, and for that process to be continuous, that's called lineage. Um, it's kind of different than the new age in the sense that it's old age, it's very ancient. We're going to start now sort of taking a look at what the core of our workshop will be, which is uh how do we go about understanding what meditation is and how it how it works and how it fits into daily life. Um, so first of all, in our tradition, I just want to say, there's a sort of emphasis placed on before you start, that you have clarity. You have some clear understanding of what the rules are, what game you're playing, how to go about it. And that's called a view. So this, this doesn't just apply to meditation. It's really a good, it's kind of a threefold way of understanding any process and it's called basically the view and then the practice and then the fruition or the result view practice results. So this morning is going to be uh, this first segment mostly clarifying the view. And then later on this morning, we're gonna actually get into the practice, which is where you kind of put on your sweat sweatsuit and shorts and get out there and actually running or lifting weights. Um, and then we'll be hopefully talking about what the payload is. You know, what, why would you do for your activity and uh, and undertake this other stream of activity and how you can stick with it. So, um, talking a little bit more about some basics there of what the view is. I want to just cover a couple of kind of bullet items. One is, we are dealing with our mind and body as they currently exist. Not some fantasy version of that. So we're working with the mind that we have already. And so many people over the years have just said, if only I could just trade this sucker in. Yeah, get you know, whatever you imagine to be a better state of mind. People out in uh, online audience have already expressed it. I feel this way, but I'd rather be feeling this way. So there's a certain amount of frustration there, you know, that's sort of the ground of the whole thing. but in a compassionate way, the approach here is actually going to start with ourselves as we are. And you know, there's a lot of ways of saying that start where you are, start as you are and the essential point there is that rather than rejecting ourselves, we're making friends with ourselves in a very fundamental way. But within this tradition, we are not so much interested in kind of achieving altered states of consciousness that's actually considered a kind of a trap. Um, we're very much the buddha himself was seen touching the ground, it's called the earth witness mood. If you see a buddha, they often have the right hand touching the ground, which means we're really dealing with grounded reality by our practice, as my teacher used to say, is expressing our desire to be realistic and to work with things as they actually are. So uh, it's very pithy, very earthy in that way. And we're gonna be talking to kitchen sink level um, in some zen monasteries in Japan, the highest LAMAs, the cook in the kitchen, you can, you can find where's the, where's the big cheese and he's the head cook. So we're talking about that kind of real willingness to connect with with the basic reality that we have, rather than trying to skip over it into some kind of higher state. You know, each one of us has a kind of set of emotions that we're kind of used to that are like kind of a familiar territory and we'll be looking right into those things, but with a very friendly and kind of open, inclusive way of going about it. So that automatically creates another dimension of kind of spaciousness, acceptance. And as soon as we try to exclude those things and get some kind of peace without them, I guarantee you're setting up, you're setting yourself up for a fall, you know, because what's happening is everything you sweep under the rug later on. It's gonna it's gonna come up to haunt you. So we're talking about really including all of the things that we might be embarrassed about about ourselves, that we wish were different that have troubles in the past, that people have complained about when they know us all of that's included. Okay, mm. So coupled with that there's a notion of inquiry or exploring, you know, discovery. And one of the things that we like to say is that well, and personally, I like to say that as far as I'm concerned, you look around, you see, people are very intelligent, you know, if they may be going blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then when they pause, you're looking, you're looking, you see this person is actually very very wise in their own way. So we're trying to bring that out, not not ah layer something on top of that, that's this method or something like that. The whole method is to bring out innate wisdom in people and also a sense of softness and caring which are considered to be natural attributes of being a person. So um the whole approach, you know from the traditional studied is about learning how to be less aggressive that you can say is a through line, less aggressive even we would say non aggression as as a method as a tone. So if you ever find yourself doing this practice and being too hard on yourself and you've added this to the to do list and you've added it to the like why I suck list. Can I say that on internet? Yeah. Okay. Because I think you know in network tv I might have you know, yeah. The y I suck list I repeat, you know, if you're adding this practice to that, don't do it, don't do it that way. Um But instead we're looking at why do I think I suck? That's interesting what's underneath that? You know? So that's the kind of inquiry that is um 3 60. You're looking everything we call. We have a word for that in the original language of Sanskrit, which is Progeria. It's kind of discerning and discriminating awareness. You just you're willing to look deeply sharply clearly. It's something even if it's disturbing, you know, even if you'd rather not see it for whatever reason you're even curious about why you'd rather not see it. That's even interesting. And then that curiosity about other people liberates a lot of compassion, you know, because you're no longer just always trying to manipulate every situation to how can I make this right for me and this very tight framework. But you're really genuinely curious, that's where the illumination can really come from from that kind of inquisitiveness. So we even go as far as to say that the practice of discernment of krajina is the mother of all the Buddhists. That's a very powerful statement, and this is if we want to have a an awake life, if we want to be present and um happy even that this quality of looking at things without kind of too much bias to begin with, too much judgment. So, um in a way we're awakening a kind of uh one of my experiences with a lot of the tibetan teachers that I study with is a childlike quality, not unsophisticated and not um naive but fundamentally innocent, you know, So that kind of quality is powerful. And honestly, if you see the higher you go up in a good, healthy organization, the more this quality is present. So that's the mind we're working with were inquisitive kind of some clarity and precision that we're trying to develop and appreciation and softness and gentleness compassion towards ourselves. Now, if you think that might have something to do with getting ahead in your world, we're gonna be looking straight at that later on, we're gonna be talking about success.