Don't Let Others Decide Who You Are | Atisha's 7 Point Mind Training

In this session, Atisha says' Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one'. Meaning, hold your own view of life if there is a decision to be made. You are unique and you know yourself best. There is a second interpretation of Atisha's message which guides us to become the awareness of the awareness. Listen and meditate along.

Transcript

Namaste and welcome to this daily live morning meditation session with me,

Dehansi.

We are currently going through the seven points of mind training by Atisha.

It is called as mind training but the process is entirely different from learning.

It is not a course,

It is a discourse.

We have learnt so much in our life that sometimes we need to unlearn.

Sometimes what is giving us misery,

What is causing us pain,

What is the problem in our life is that we are holding on to something,

That we have learned something that we must unlearn.

30 minutes of contemplative spirituality and meditation with me today and every day is a process of unlearning,

Is a process of dehypnosis.

It is a discourse to unlearn what we don't need in our life,

What is not serving us,

What has been wrongly learned which we never asked for.

And in this unlearning we allow our natural self,

Our natural being of who we really are to emerge,

To evolve,

To expand and to rise up on its own.

Without us trying to teach it something,

Trying to course it into a particular way.

In today's session we are on point number 5 of this Atisha's 7 point mind training.

Let me revise the sutras and then we will focus on today's sutra.

In this point number 5,

Atisha says,

All Dharma agrees at one point.

Of the two witnesses,

Hold the principle one.

Always maintain only a joyful mind.

If you can practice even when distracted,

You are well trained.

Very simple lines,

But a lot to unfold,

A lot to unpack.

Yesterday we spoke about what is this convergence point of all Dharmas,

Where all Dharmas meet and all Dharmas agree on one.

Today we are going to take a deeper look into what does it mean by two witnesses and what does Atisha mean when he says,

Focus on the principle one.

This can be interpreted on two levels.

The first level of interpretation is for general purposes.

This is not necessarily in the practice of meditation.

This is applicable to our entire life,

In our daily routines,

In our daily activities.

Remember that Atisha's whole work is not just limited to the minutes of meditation,

To the practice of meditation,

But also the application of meditation into one's own life.

So he constantly throughout the discourse,

He constantly brings the practice,

Brings the learnings or the values that we have gathered from meditation,

The valuables of the meditation,

Take them from the practice,

Bring them into daily life,

Take it over your entire 24-7 and see what this means in our daily life.

So he says there are two witnesses.

In our daily life,

What are those two witnesses?

One is what others see of you,

What others perceive of you,

What others think of you,

What others have as an opinion about you.

And the other is you yourself.

What you think about yourself,

How you see yourself,

How you perceive yourself.

Atisha says that out of the two witnesses,

Focus on the primary one.

Focus he says in his words,

Hold the principle one.

Which means if there are these two witnesses and you have to decide between the two,

Hold the principle one.

Which is the principle one?

Is your own.

Is your own view about yourself is the principle one.

But this seems somewhat contradictory,

Contrary to how we are trained in life,

How we are trained in education.

We are always made to not trust our own view,

Not trust our own opinion.

Forget about other people,

Forget about other matters,

About oneself.

We are trained,

We are learning to not trust ourselves.

We are learning to put our opinion aside,

Our view of ourselves aside and bring in the feedback,

Bring in others view about us and shape us,

See us from what others think.

What the collective thinks about us,

What others think about us is what should drive who we are.

This training,

This education,

This societal structure is good for control,

Is good for managing human beings together,

Is good for the organization but at a very high cost.

And the cost is that we lose trust in one's own view.

And we only know ourselves as what others think,

What the collective sees and wants out of us.

In mathematics,

This process is known as normalization.

If you have lots of data points and you see that there is a nice Gaussian distribution,

What you are trying to do in the process of normalization is you are trying to take everything that is outline the normal,

That is outline the distribution,

Come and join closer to the distribution so that you can make sense out of that distribution,

You can make sense out of that organization,

You can steer it,

You can control it.

So it has a certain utility to put society together,

To put structures on it,

To put laws on it,

To put rules on it but it has a cost to pay on an individual level which is that you decide,

Who you are is decided by others and not by yourself.

A rabbit and a snake,

They were in a jungle on their own path.

The paths collided,

They collided,

They both got angry,

They started shouting at each other,

Discussing whose fault was that,

Who was having the priority and who was not having the priority of the way.

Then in the seat of the discussion,

Snake said,

Look,

I am blind,

I am sorry about this,

I am sorry about that but since I am blind,

I have the priority and you could have seen where you are going.

The rabbit said,

Oh,

Actually I am also blind,

So I am also sorry,

Then we both are not at fault.

So they both suddenly the conversation moved away from the discussion about the collision to sympathizing with each other and their blindness.

The snake said,

You know,

One thing I regret about being blind,

Rabbit said what,

Snake said I am blind since birth,

I have never known who am I,

I am only being told to do this and to do that,

I have never known who I really am,

I would love to know who I really am.

The rabbit said,

Oh,

I am also blind since birth,

I am also being told to do this and that,

I also don't know who I am,

I also want to know who I am.

They again bonded even further with each other,

Then rabbit got an idea,

He said,

Let's do this idea,

Let's wrap our bodies around each other,

Fill each other,

Feel each other and then describe who we are,

Maybe you have an idea,

Maybe I have an idea.

So snake liked the idea,

Snake went first,

He wrapped his body all around the rabbit for few minutes and then said,

Hmm,

You are soft,

You are fluffy,

You are furry,

Your ears are long,

Your feet are long,

You are sounding very gentle,

I think you are a bugs bunny,

You are a rabbit.

The rabbit said,

Oh wow,

Thank you,

I had never known that I was a rabbit,

Now it's my turn to give you,

To return the favour to you,

To tell you who you are.

So the rabbit did the same,

He went all around the snake and spent five minutes analysing how the snake is,

The rabbit said,

Hmm,

You are thin,

You are long,

You are scaly,

You are slimy,

You have a scary sound,

You have a splitted tongue,

You sound exactly like my friend's boss,

Are you my friend's boss?

This is how we describe each other,

This is how we know each other,

We are perceiving,

We are creating our view not only about the world but about ourselves by what others say.

So here,

Ateisha brings in a practical point for the lifestyle,

He says,

In these two witnesses,

Focus on the principle one,

Which is your own.

And then there is a second interpretation,

Which is very much valid for the meditation practice,

If you want to go deeper in knowing who you really are,

You see in the moments of awareness,

In the moments when you are in silence,

When you are in meditation and your awareness is witnessing the body,

Witnessing the mind,

Witnessing the thoughts,

Witnessing what's all around,

So you are aware,

You are centred,

In those moments there are also two witnesses,

One is the awareness of everything,

Which is the body,

The mind,

The thoughts of all the objects,

And the second one,

Which is the awareness of the awareness,

The one which is behind the awareness,

This all pervading awareness from which this smaller awareness is arising,

Sourcing itself out,

That background larger awareness,

Which is known as open awareness,

Which has no boundaries,

Which has no shape,

Which has no source,

It is always there,

Which can also be called as God awareness,

Godliness,

All pervading sense of awareness and consciousness.

So the more,

The deeper you go within yourself,

First of all,

Your own opinions,

Your own views about yourself,

Who you are,

What you want,

What you don't want,

That's for the world,

That's when you interact with the world,

But when you want to move deeper towards the truth,

You first of all are in the awareness from where you can see the mind,

Where you can see the body,

Where you can see all,

Everything else,

Which is about yourself,

All your energies,

Thoughts,

All the contents of what you call yourself,

Even what you say I am,

Even that self,

You can observe,

And then the final step,

Which Patisho calls as the primary awareness,

The primary witness,

You take even one step towards this awareness and you realize that there is this all pervading awareness all around,

Which is then sourcing everything else.

It's up to you how deep you can go,

What you want to achieve,

This session is a chance for you to go as deep as you can,

We will take few minutes to first of all establish this awareness of body,

Mind and everything else,

All the senses,

And then move deeper to the awareness of the awareness,

The primary source of awareness.

With that let us close our eyes,

Sit in a posture that is comfortable.

Begin by becoming aware of your senses.

That will bring you in the present moment,

Of what you see in front of your closed eyes,

Of what you hear,

Of what you taste,

Of what you smell.

Of what you feel on your skin.

Take your time to settle in the awareness of your five senses.

Join us for Thursday slide.

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Reviews

Dhyanse,
Another very good one!
Pleasantly surprised as a trained statistician to hear about Gaussian distribution. Gauss is one of my favorite mathematicians. I am atill amazed as to how he came up with the formula 1+2+...n=n*(n+1)/2
The msg from the mefitation resonated with me deeply. It is a core of my belief.

Thank you 🙏🙏🙏