Hello friends,
Today we are going to engage in a practice that is mostly shamatha or concentration,
But it's going to be a form of open concentration.
And I'm going to lead you through a set of techniques that I used for many years,
Which I found very helpful in clarifying the sort of awareness that I'm concentrating into in sort of open shamatha practices or open concentration practices.
And I'm going to try to give you a lot of time to just take it in your own way as well.
So let's get started.
So we begin by taking a deep breath,
Letting it out,
Relaxing the body and the mind.
Now we're going to do it again.
Take another deep breath and notice the places of nodding as we take it.
And as we release,
We just open all the knots,
Knots in our body,
Knots in our shoulders,
Little knots in our face,
Around our eyes,
Beside our lips,
In our neck and back,
And especially the knots inside of our torso and our emotional body,
Our energetic body.
So one last time,
We're going to take one last deep breath.
We're going to take it very deep and pull tight,
Feel all the knots,
Feel the tightness everywhere that it is in the body.
And then just like the tightness of a hand clenched into a tight fist,
And we might even do that,
Clench our hands into a tight fist as we breathe in.
And then as we breathe out,
We open the fist,
We open the knots in the body,
Open the knots in the energetic body,
Open the knots in the thoughts,
In the mind,
Okay?
Feel the tightness and release.
And just breathe naturally.
Now,
This will be a practice that's right on the edge of a kind of Shikantanza or Chök Chö practice,
But it rests mostly just in Samatha or in the relative dimension,
Because probably we haven't recognized the unborn nature.
And so,
As we sit,
We're going to open our eyes,
We can open them all the way.
It's okay if you blink,
It's okay if you don't blink,
Really,
It's all fine.
And we're going to let our eyes settle.
We can keep them at about eye level.
But if we're feeling particularly distracted by thoughts,
We might want to lower the gaze somewhat.
We're going to keep the eyes open,
We're going to settle the vision,
Settle the eyes or the visual field onto some object,
But we're going to open the mind,
The visual field really is going to be open and panoramic,
Bringing in the entirety of the visual field.
So while we're concentrating our eyes,
We're focusing our eyes on an object,
The mind is seeing everything that's happening.
So that's our beginning.
Of course,
We have a straight back,
Whether that's reclined or sitting.
We're going to breathe naturally,
Eyes are open.
And now we're going to be settling into the clarity aspect of awareness or of mind.
And the way that we're going to recognize clarity is we're going to do a few steps.
We're going to begin by first waiting in openness,
With eyes open.
We're going to be,
Have our ears open,
Our body open,
Our emotions and our mind open.
Whatever comes,
Comes,
And we just allow it to come.
Like our mind and our body and our energies are like open hands,
And whatever phenomena,
Thoughts or emotions or sensations arise,
Like little birds that land on our hand for just a moment and then they fly off,
And we're just going to appreciate them,
Whatever arises.
So let's sit and wait for something to arise,
Or many things to arise,
And we just allow them to arise while maintaining presence to the totality of our experience.
And the real concern here is that we become fixated,
That our mind tightens around one of these objects.
And what I'm going to suggest is that as we're getting started here and learning this practice,
We're going to allow our mind to tighten around objects that enter.
So when the bird lands on our hand,
We'll allow ourselves to try to grab a hold of that bird a little bit,
But I just ask that you do it very,
Very gently.
So don't grab it tight,
Try to always keep it very gentle.
When a thought arises,
Rather than becoming totally caught up in it and running off with it to the next thought and the next,
Instead try to be there with it,
See what's happening.
Maybe you get a little bit stuck in it,
But you're always kind of keeping just a bit of presence in the whole panoramic openness to the totality of your phenomenal experience.
Let's practice that for a minute or two.
Hopefully that has given you a little bit of openness.
Hopefully you didn't hold the bird so tightly that it couldn't fly away when it was its time to fly away.
Because if we grasp too tightly,
The bird is still changing.
The phenomena that are arising still are always in a process of becoming,
But if we grasp too tightly to them,
They struggle and become quite hard and difficult to work with.
So if we can keep a little bit of openness there,
We can still hold on to them a bit,
But as soon as we feel them ready to move,
We just allow them to go their own way.
Now we're going to take that initial experience with the phenomena that arise,
And we're going to move into an awareness of those phenomena.
So when you cognize a phenomena arising,
It's jumping into your experience more forcefully,
I want you to just recognize that object like you were doing before,
And then take a small step back into an awareness of that object.
And as you take that small step back,
You recognize the awareness of that object that sort of envelops the object.
You give a little smile,
And you breathe out,
And you just relax into that awareness.
So again,
The object arises,
Whether it's a thought,
Or an emotion,
Or a sound,
Or something in the visual field,
It catches you a little bit.
You're present with it loosely for a moment,
You step back into the awareness that envelops it,
Give a little smile,
Breathe out,
And release into that awareness.
Let's try that for a few minutes.
Now there's great joy in the awareness.
The awareness,
The way it embraces all of reality,
Or all of phenomenal reality,
Is so beautiful and gentle.
And I hope you can appreciate the gentleness there,
Have some gratitude for the gentle embrace of your own awareness,
And the experience that it allows you to have,
Or that allows to arise.
Now we're going to take one more step,
And we're going to look at something,
Maybe another aspect of mind,
Or maybe it's another aspect of awareness,
The other side of the coin of awareness perhaps.
It's hard to say exactly,
But we're going to take a slice of our phenomenal experience,
And that is the vividness,
Or clarity,
Or the freshness of experience.
And so when an object arises,
Or maybe if there's no object arising,
We can just rest in the freshness of awareness itself,
The freshness of the experience,
The aspect that gives things their luminous presence,
The sharpness,
Or the distinctness of phenomenal experience,
Whether it's sounds,
Or thoughts,
Or emotions,
Or sights.
And so when an object arises,
Or not,
We recognize it loosely,
We step back into awareness of it,
The embrace of awareness,
And then rather than resting in the awareness,
We cognize the freshness,
The vividness,
Or clarity,
Luminosity of that object in the awareness.
And then we just relax completely and openly into that vividness,
And we allow that vividness to pervade all of our experience.
Again,
When we relax,
We relax totally open again,
Everything open.
We don't stay on the object.
So the object comes into mind,
We loosely experience it,
We back a little bit into the embrace of awareness,
We can give a smile,
We experience the freshness or vividness of this,
And then we just totally release into the openness of that clarity or vividness.
And now for most of the rest of this session,
We'll remain quiet,
I'll just give some small pointers along the way,
And may this go very deep for you,
All the way to Buddhahood.
And if we're feeling comfortable with clarity,
With vividness,
Freshness,
We can just skip the awareness step.
We can go right from recognizing whatever phenomena straight into recognizing the freshness of the phenomena,
Giving a little smile and just releasing into that freshness as it pervades the whole of phenomenal experience.
If you find yourself solidifying objects,
Solidifying thoughts,
Or other phenomenal objects,
Just try to keep that one foot,
Like before we kept one foot a bit in the presence of the totality of phenomenal experience,
Now we try to keep one foot in the presence of clarity,
That clear,
Luminous,
Fresh vividness that's an aspect of every experience.
Totally relaxing,
Totally releasing into clarity.
Whatever is arising has a clear aspect,
Or you wouldn't be able to cognize it at all.
There's a luminosity to it.
Even the feeling of boredom,
Or distraction,
Or searching for something to do,
Of wondering whether you're doing it right,
Those all have a clarity aspect.
So whatever is happening,
Just recognize that clear,
Luminous freshness and release into that,
Opening everything.
Thank you for joining me today on this meditation,
And I ask that you dedicate this to your highest aspiration,
Your deepest,
Truest aspiration for this life.
Thank you very much.
