Transcript of Teaching Given to the Colorado Communityby Gen-la Chokyi Dhakpaon 4 November 2007
Introduction
So, we can say our usual aspirations, please. We will be pausing on the Four Thoughts and then the Four Immeasurables meditations, which are standard Buddhist practice. In between we do about two minutes of contemplations on each of the Four Thoughts: the Precious Human Birth, Impermanence, Karma and the Defects of Samsara.
If you’re not familiar with how to do these contemplations, you can go online and download, and you can learn, slowly, how to do any of those contemplations. In the meantime, if you’re not familiar, feel free to be creative and find your own way to express contemplations on the precious human birth, impermanence, karma and the defects of samsara. That would be up to you. But hopefully take some time, slowly, and listen to the recordings of how to do each of the instructions properly.
And then with the Four Immeasurables, take about five minutes and contemplate these, equanimity, loving kindness, compassion and joy practices, which are also online. In any case, if you don’t know how to do any of these practices, then simply at least do a small breathing meditation, just counting the breath if you don’t know how to do anything at all. Which is fine, you can simply, on the inhalation count one – two – three – four, and the exhalation the same way, until you have a greater understanding of these contemplation practices.
After the contemplation practices are finished, then I will go into our standard meditation practice, which is called Anapanasati, or Mindfulness of Breathing, and then we’ll have our class session after that. If you’re new today, I can only say that maybe at that time if you would like to go, after we’ve finished the Mindfulness of Breathing, that would be fine. If you choose to stay you should know that this is the last class in a series that we’ve done that’s lasted about 16 or 17 weeks. So you may feel very overwhelmed if you decide to stay for the remaining part – which is fine, if you do, but just know that it is the culmination of about a 17- or 18-week course, actually.
So thank you very much; it’s nice to have all of you here. And Dave, if I can ask you to go through the aspirations.
DAVE: Sure, Gen-la. Let me just be clear about this. You want me to do the Refuge and Bodhicitta aspirations, the Four Thoughts and the Four Immeasurables, and that’s it?
That’s it.
DAVE: Okay. [Leads prayers and aspirations.] [After recitation of Four Immeasurables:] And did you want us to do the contemplation at this point, Gen-la? Sorry.
Yes, I’d like you to take about five minutes and go through a brief contemplation of the Four Immeasurables.
[Pause for contemplation]
And please relax. Okay, so take a minute, stretch out, stretch your legs. You can even stand up if you like. [Pause] Okay. Please take your seat. [Brief pause]
Anapanasati – Mindfulness of Breathing
Okay, so our new class schedule will begin next week, and we’ll be delving into a very beautiful practice that’s called The Four Foundations of Mindfulness. And we’ll be using the practice of Mindfulness of Breathing, or Anapanasati, to explore each of the four foundations. Now these practices are what the Buddha described as the direct path to realization. They’re not difficult to do; they do require some effort on your part, however.
But that will be next week, and so this week I’ll give some basic meditation instruction regarding mindfulness of breathing and we’ll do that for about 20 minutes and then we’ll stop. At that point, new people, if you would like to just come back next week when the new classes start, that would be fine. And again, if you would like to stay and listen to the culmination of the last 16 or 17 weeks, that is also not a problem but you might feel overwhelmed, which would not make sense. But in any case, that’s that.
Review of Meditation Posture
So, this meditation posture that we’ll go through today: If you can, sit cross-legged or, if you’re sitting in a chair, just don’t use the back of the chair as a support unless you have a medical need to do so. And then just place your feet firmly on the ground. Your ankles should not be crossed. But the most important detail is that your spine is upright, not rigid but upright, a very dignified posture. Shoulders are back, elbows out away from the ribs. And the hands can be placed in traditional posture, right hand in the left hand, palms facing upward, thumbs together gently. Or, you can place the hands palms downward, resting on your knees or on your thighs. But again, the shoulders are back and the elbows out away from the ribs.
If you tuck the chin in slightly, it will straighten your spine out even further, just a little bit, a slight tuck-in of the chin. Your lips should be slightly parted; this will stop your mouth from drying out during practice. And then your tongue should rest naturally on your upper palate, just behind your teeth and that will help you stop salivating during the practice.
Your eyes are open, gazing just over the tip of your nose approximately three to four feet in front of you. If, during the practice, your eyes should naturally close, that’s not a problem. We’ll breathe through the nose in this practice.
And when you first begin, it may be helpful to gain mindfulness or sati, it may be helpful to do a short counting of the breath: a one – two – three – four on the inhalation, and a one – two – three – four on the exhalation.
Meditation Practice
Go ahead and just begin doing that for a minute. [Pause] Breathing all the way down to the navel, all the way down to the diaphragm. Long, deep, silent breaths. [Pause]
Again, as you keep breathing in through the nose, that long, deep breath, instead of counting now, I’d like you to notice three points: as you breathe in, at the tip of the nose, at the solar plexus, and at the navel, noticing the breath arise at each of those three places on the inhalation and then in the same three places on the exhalation, but in reverse order, noticing the navel, the solar plexus and the tip of the nose. And if you would do that for just a minute, please. [Pause – 1:30 mins.]
And now if you would even drop those three points and just begin to chase the breath, or to follow the breath, all the way through, mentally, from the tip of the nose all the way down to the navel and back. At this time I’d also like you to add a monolog, an internal monolog. When you’re breathing in, I’d like you to say to yourself, “I know that I’m breathing in the long breath.” And on the exhalation, “I know that I’m breathing out the long breath.” Following the breath with your mind, all the way through the inhalation and the exhalation from the tip of the nose to the navel: “I know that I’m breathing in the long breath; I know that I’m breathing out the long breath.” And I’d like you to go on like this for the next 20 minutes, please.
Try not to move. If you need to move, do so mindfully and slowly. Correct the posture maybe two or three times in the next 20 minutes, at the most.
[Pause – 20 mins.]
And – please relax. Stretch your legs out once more.
So this practice is called Anapanasati. It is the first of sixteen distinct practices that the Buddha gave. If you’re interested in reading up on it, the sutra is called the Anapanasati Sutta and I would encourage you to do that. It’s A-n-a-p-a-n-a-s-a-t-I, Anapanasati. Ana means inhalation; apana means exhalation; and sati means mindfulness. So this is the main practice that the Buddha taught to his monks and nuns and lay disciples and it is the practice that is used as the medium for the Four Foundations of Mindfulness which are the culmination of the practices that the Buddha used to gain realization. It’s the practice that he was doing himself under a tree in Bodhgaya 2550 years ago.
Returning the Reaction Chains to Their Original Nature
In any case, that’s that and now, if you’ve been coming to classes for the karma sessions, or for those of you who will be listening in the future, I want to give the instructions about returning our habitual reaction chains to their original nature. If you are new and you’d like to leave at this time, that’s fine. If you’ve been coming to the classes or will be doing these instructions in the future, please take note that what we’ll be doing, as we go into the Four Foundations of Mindfulness practices I am recommending for those of you who’ve been going through the karma classes that you actually have either one long session or two sessions a day, one focusing on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness and the second continuing to work with dismantling reactive emotions.
So the practice I’m going to describe to you, we’re not actually going to do the practice. I’m just going to describe it for you. And it should be done over five weeks. What I described to you last week should have been done over the course of five to six weeks. That was looking at the Five Dakinis meditations. In this session, you would add another five weeks here. After you complete last week’s five weeks, then you would do these five weeks.
And the purpose of this, which we’ll call the Five Dakinis Form and Emptiness practice, the purpose of this is to return the reaction chains to their original nature. So the meditation method is as follows:
You should direct your attention toward the two points in the reaction chain where your attention decays. And that’s the movement from form to emptiness, and the movement from emptiness to form. So we use the metaphors that we used in the meditation to become familiar with the reaction shifts in our awareness. And then we use actual life situations that trigger the same reaction chain and adapt the meditation to the situation. Again, you should use actual life situations that trigger the same reaction chains, and then we adapt the meditation to the situation.
So we work first with the movement from form to emptiness. And as in the previous practice, you start with the earth element. So you think of a dangerous, or a lethal, situation or event, and you let the earth reaction chain run inside of you. You imagine, for example, that you’re in an earthquake for instance, and you feel very vulnerable. The ground is shaking underneath you. But you escape. And how you escape is really up to you. You should be creative, but try to be realistic, no use of magic or fantasy elements. But just be creative. And I want you to escape. Or imagine that you’re sinking into quicksand, and then you escape.
So then, go back into the situation and feel the vulnerability again. But this time – this is very, very important – this time I would like you to die. I’d like you to see yourself die in the earthquake or in the quicksand. How you die is up to you, but I want you to die.
And then go back a third time and put your attention into the experience of the earthquake, and your fears and your reactions. And everything, including all of your internal reactions, becomes brighter and brighter, until both the earthquake and you become pure light.
And then I’d like you to rest in the light for a few minutes and let the jewel form at the earth center.
And then you do the other elements, and the dakinis, just like in the previous meditations. Each week you add an additional element and you do the previous element(s) plus the new one for that week. You spend more time on the new instruction than the previous one(s).
So when you’re clear about the images and you can stay present in your reactions, you take a situation from life and you go through the same process. For example, your boss accuses you of not doing your work properly. You insist that you have done your work properly, but you’re uncertain inside because you’re not sure what criteria are being applied. He pulls out reams of data that reveal that your work isn’t up to par. And first you escape, perhaps by showing how the data is in error. And then you bring up the situation again, and this time you die. You lose your job, in other words. So then you bring it up a third time, and you let everything turn into light.
So then after 3-5 days of this, I want you to work with another lethal situation. And you focus on the movement from emptiness to form, which is the re-forming of the reaction. So for earth, the metaphor is imprisonment, the same metaphor that we’ve used before. So you imagine that you have built a fortress all around you, but the fortress has become a prison and you’re trapped. The walls are slowly closing in on you and you can’t move. And the walls continue to close in, but then you escape. The way you escape is up to you. Again, be realistic, but creative.
And you go back to the situation a second time, and the walls close in and crush you and you die. And you go back a third time and you bring attention to the situation until everything, including you, turns into light. And you just rest there for a few minutes.
And then again, you pick a situation in your life in which you were imprisoned by your own rigidity. You go through the same three scenarios: escape, die, and turn to light. Then after 3-5 days, go to the water element.
So then you do the Earth Dakini; this is in the transformation meditation. And then you go through the same process that I’ve described just now, 3-5 days of working with the movement from form to emptiness in water, and then 3-5 days of working with the movement from emptiness to form. Do the remaining meditations and Dakinis, just as in the transformation meditation, without the additions.
So you work through all five elements over the course of about five weeks. In each meditation session, you’re likely to do all three scenarios only one or two times. The more vivid you make the experience, the more the practice cuts into the operation of the habit pattern. So for each of these 10 points, you imagine lethal situations and then go through them, first finding a way to escape. And then you die in them, and then you turn them into light.
Just as in the first meditation on the Five Dakinis, this practice uses re-enactment to undermine the operation of the reaction chain. By coming up with a way of escape, we undermine the tendency to accept the situation as the pattern sees it. So when we reach in for a creative response, we step outside the confines of the pattern.
And then, in the next part, where you die in the situation, there we undermine the tendency to perpetuate the pattern by resisting it. So for instance, when faced with rigidity in another person, we react the same way: we perpetuate the pattern of rigidity in the interaction. So dying by holding on to the pattern reaction reveals that the pattern functions blindly, to the detriment of our welfare and even our life.
And finally, by imagining that everything in the situation becomes light, we return the experience of the situation to its original nature and we undermine the tendency to take the content of our experience as what is real.
So remember that the intention of our practice is to be present in the mystery of our being, which is just the arising and subsiding of our experience.
So the last set of practices is really quite difficult, and once again you come in touch with one of the most powerful fears that you can experience, which is the fear of death. Your experience with previous meditations on death will help you here. We’re enslaved by our habitual patterns because we’re unable to stay present in the fear of our death and the death of those patterns, and then of course, our fear of non-existence.
Okay, so basically the whole thing comes down to that the more that you come to terms with the possibility of the death of the habit patterns and the death of your own being, and coming to terms with your fear of these things, then the more awake you’ll be in your life. And so this is the actual dismantling of the reaction chain.
So that’s the practice. There’s, again, 10 practices there, working with each of the five elements. Form to emptiness is five of them, and then emptiness to form is the other five. So that’ll take you about five weeks, again spending 2-3 days on the first half of each element, form to emptiness. And then 2-3 days on emptiness to form before moving on to water, and then fire, air and void. I’d like you to use the same metaphors that we’ve been using all along, here, in terms of quicksand or earthquake, being engulfed by water, for fire, from form to emptiness, the isolation and then for emptiness to form you can use an inferno or an explosion of energy. For air, you can use from form to emptiness falling from a cliff or a building, and then from emptiness to form you can use an activity, maybe like being torn to pieces in a hurricane or tornado. And for void, maybe just becoming nothing. All the elements just converge and dissolve, and then emptiness to form regarding void, fragmentation: maybe your body is just reduced to dust and disintegrates. So you can maybe use those examples or come up with your own, whatever works for you.