A very warm welcome to you in this daily live meditation with me,
Dhyansai.
Every morning at 7 AM Central European Time,
I share some moments of contemplation,
Meditation,
And silence with you.
Joining me in these 30 minutes will take you one step closer to inner peace,
To silence,
To wisdom,
To truth,
To self-awareness.
So wherever you are in your life,
These sessions will help you to become more silent,
Become more aware.
In these sessions,
I take first five to 10 minutes to bring in some contemplations before we move into silence.
And that establishes our practice of meditation and spirituality.
Today,
I would like you to understand very briefly that meditation and spirituality,
They go hand in hand.
You cannot separate meditation and spirituality.
Maybe in the very beginning,
Maybe in the very initial ideas of meditation,
One can say that I don't want any spirituality.
I will only want a practice to relax.
I only want some moments of peace.
That's fine.
But the moment,
The more you get into meditation,
Which means the more your mind rests,
The more your body settles,
Naturally what is left is your spirit.
What arises,
What comes in front of you is your own spirit.
So spirituality is bound to happen no matter you wish for it or not.
So it's better to understand and take steps towards meditation,
Along with taking steps towards understanding spirituality,
To taking these few points,
What will help you to shape your spirituality,
What will help you to work with your spirituality,
To be seated,
Centered in peace,
In silence,
In awareness,
In bliss.
For today's session,
I invite you to start a new chapter,
A new chapter where I introduce some mind training frameworks from Buddhism.
Before I get into that,
I would like to say that while we are going through,
In the next days,
Through Buddhism or Sufism or any other concept,
Any other tradition,
The idea is not to become a Buddhist,
The idea is not to become a Sufi or a tantric or a yogi.
The idea is to learn and inspire.
To take what's valuable out of all these traditions,
All these rich heritage that we all own,
That we all have,
Without having to become one of the monks,
If this is not the lifestyle that we want.
I will help you to remain at a distance from all these traditions,
If you like,
But at the same time,
Dive into it,
At the same time,
To take what's valuable,
What's inspiring to become more meditative,
To bring in more spirituality in our lives.
I start today with Atisha,
The Buddhist monk Atisha.
I remember in my own spiritual journey,
In my own meditation journey,
The very beginnings were also accompanied by Atisha's work.
I stumbled upon Atisha's work through Osho,
Where he had done commentaries on the seven-point mind training of Atisha.
And I found that very,
Very valuable for my life,
For how I saw spirituality,
For how I established the practice of meditation and mindfulness in my life.
So over the next days,
I will share with you these few points of mind training by Atisha.
It comes out of Tibet.
It forms a practice called Lojong,
Which is a very essential practice in Tibetan Buddhism.
It covers approximately 59 slogans,
Or you can call them sutras,
Which form these seven pillars of mind training.
So let's get into these seven pillars of mind training before we sit in silence.
Another thing,
Why do we need mind training?
Let's be clear about that.
Because when we enter into this world of meditative silence,
This world of spirituality,
There is a lot of pitfalls,
There is a lot of right and left that can happen.
And also in our daily life,
Our mind is all over the place.
It has,
Because of the lifestyles that we have,
It has become such that it is not a friend anymore.
It is rather coming in the way.
So it's important,
It's essential to take also this chance to train our mind,
To let our mind be put in its right place,
To take few moments to give the mind a certain framework,
Just for a few days.
You don't have to follow this,
Practice this throughout your life,
Or make it something that is a part of your life for a long period of time.
Just practice this for a few days,
For seven days,
For twenty days,
Whatever it takes for these teachings,
For your mind to settle into these principles.
And just see for yourself how is the experience of your life developing as you bring in these principles of mind training.
Let's get into these seven pillars of mind training by Atisha.
The first pillar which Atisha proposes is the preliminaries,
Which he says are the basis of any meditation or spiritual practice.
The preliminaries,
Why preliminaries?
What he is saying is,
Before we get into any of the practices,
Before we get into meditation,
Before we get into spirituality,
We need to set certain ground rules,
Certain preliminaries that will help us to shape our mind,
To keep our mind trained,
To keep our mind in its right place.
And if you look into these preliminaries,
The four reminders that Atisha proposes,
They don't sound buddhistic or following any particular tradition,
But rather they are based,
They are rooted in the truths of life.
So it doesn't matter if you are following,
If you are practicing any other religion,
Any other tradition,
Any other belief system,
It does not matter.
You can still imbibe these four points into your daily life.
The first one is,
Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life.
Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life.
This is so basic.
We all know our life is so precious,
But are we really aware of that?
Are we really considering this fact that our human life is precious throughout our lives?
Are we really mindful of this while we are acting,
While we are in our daily routines,
That our life is precious?
Find a reason to remind you.
Find a reason,
If you don't have one,
To tell you that your life,
That your human life that you got is very,
Very precious.
Such a short lifespan,
So precious.
Please remember this,
Not just for your meditation practice,
But also throughout your day,
That your life is precious,
And maintain this awareness of this preciousness of your life.
Second,
Be aware of the reality that life ends,
That comes for everyone.
Another basic fact of human life,
The impermanence of human life,
That life is short,
You are given this life,
Then the life also has an end.
An awareness of this impermanence changes everything,
How we do things,
How we perceive things.
The forgetfulness of this impermanence also changes everything,
How we do things,
How we decide about things in our life.
See in your own life whether what you do,
How you act,
How you move,
How you think,
How you decide,
Is it based on this awareness that your life has impermanence.
The life that you have at some point of time is going to be finished.
This impermanence creates not only the urgency to live,
But also it takes all the crap away.
You are not concerned with anything that is less significant for your life.
The third slogan,
The third sutra of the first point,
Recall that whatever you do,
Whether virtuous or not,
Has a result.
What Atisha is proposing here is that every action,
Every thought,
Every movement that you make has some implication in your life.
We generally think that what we express only through our actions is what is conveyed,
Is what is a part of our communication,
Is what is the manifestation in the world.
But if you observe carefully,
If you are aware of how our life is unfolding,
How our life is manifesting,
We come to this conclusion,
We come to this realization also on our own,
That every act,
Not just the act,
Every thought,
Every thought that you have in your mind impacts your life.
It shapes your life,
How your life manifests and unfolds.
So be mindful of how you are acting,
How you are thinking,
What your actions are,
What your thinking is,
Because this is what is going to come back to you in your life,
This is going to shape your life in a certain way.
And the last one,
Obsessing about getting what you want,
And avoiding what you don't want,
Does not result in happiness.
What that means is that if you are caught too much into trying to achieve something,
Trying to get to somewhere,
And trying to avoid something else,
If you are constantly in this pull towards something,
Or push from what you don't want,
You are in a state of unease.
Relax,
Relax from this constant push and pull in your daily life.
There may be moments where you have to act in that certain way,
But try that your push and pull doesn't become the nature of your life.
So in meditation,
In moments of awareness,
In silence,
Bring awareness to this state of your being,
Whether it's in a push or a pull,
Or is it in rest,
Observe it,
See it,
Correct it.
With this first preliminary,
Which is these four reminders,
I would like us to meditate,
Contemplate over these reminders in the next 10 to 15 minutes.
I invite you to close your eyes,
And enter into meditative silence,
Into one's whole being,
Growing the attention and awareness,
From all different directions to within,
To your inner space.
Whichever posture you're sitting,
Make sure that your back is straight,
And your body is relaxed,
Your mind coming down,
Allowing your awareness to move inwards.
Take these moments to become aware of this fact,
That your life is precious.
It's a precious opportunity,
Chance to be alive.
Awareness on your aliveness.
With every breath you inhale and exhale,
Remind yourself of this fact.
It's the logical recognition of the streetcar.
Thank you.
The second reminder,
The impermanence of life.
What you have as life will one day be no more.
What you have as life will one day be no more.
With every breath,
Inhalation remind yourself of the birth.
With exhalation remind yourself of death.
With every inhalation and exhalation remind yourself of the impermanence of life.
With every inhalation and exhalation remind yourself of the birth.
As your awareness brightens,
Move on to the third reminder.
Every action,
Every thought counts.
All these thoughts that you have in your mind that flow in and disappear,
They all impact your life in a certain way.
Become aware of your thoughts.
Thank you.
Allow the silence to arise in you.
Let go of all.
Let go of all.
Push and pull.
Let go of all wants.
Don't move towards anything.
Don't move away from anything.
Let go of all.
Let go of all.
Let go of all effort and simply remain silent and aware.
Let go of all.
Let go of all.
And very gently and slowly you may open your eyes while maintaining this silent awareness that's established in your being over the last minutes.
And as you proceed further in your day,
Remember these four thoughts,
Four preliminaries.
That your life is precious,
Your life is impermanent,
Everything that you do,
All acts,
All thoughts,
Every movement that you have in your consciousness has an impact over your life.
And don't become obsessed with this or that.
Don't try to move too much towards something or run away from something.
Rest in as is.
With that,
I thank all of you in joining this meditation session.
I'll see you tomorrow.
Namaste.
