Namaste and welcome to this daily life meditation session with me,
Dhyansa.
30 minutes today and every day,
If you walk along with me on this journey towards spirituality,
Towards meditation,
It will bring you the much needed inner peace,
Silence,
Self-awareness and put your life slightly back in order.
We started a series on the practice of Lojong,
Tibetan,
Buddhism a few days back,
Where Atisha,
The meditation master,
Gave 7 points of mind training.
We are going through these 7 points of mind training as a part of training our mind,
Preparing our mind to come back slightly in order for meditation and for our life in general.
So join me in going through the sutras which Atisha gave hundreds of years ago and they are still valid today.
I will contextualize them for you to take them out of the practice of Buddhism,
So you don't have to be a Buddhist to practice these essential core principles and follow them,
Bring whatever is valuable out of these principles to your life,
To your daily life.
We are on the point number 2,
The second pillar of Atisha's 7 point mind training,
Which is a training towards Bodhicitta.
The second pillar is dedicated to moving towards Bodhicitta,
Which is to have awareness,
To have the consciousness of Buddha,
A Buddha-like consciousness,
A Christ-like consciousness,
A Krishna-like consciousness,
Pure consciousness.
Atisha gave sutras,
Let me read them out to you first.
He says,
Beautiful lines,
Very simple to understand,
But let me still break them down for you.
What does this mean for the practice of meditation and for our life in general?
The first component of it,
Which we practiced yesterday as a meditation technique,
Regard every phenomena in life as a dream.
I extensively discussed this yesterday,
To take for a moment,
Even as a technique,
Regarding considering this for a moment,
That whatever is happening in your life,
All phenomena,
From what you perceive,
What goes on in your mind,
To even the physical world around you.
Because,
As I said,
Although the experience may seem solid,
As physical as the world may appear,
Regard this as a dream,
As a part of the meditation technique.
Today,
I would like to build upon that and move slightly deeper,
Further on this,
To pay attention to what Atisha is saying,
Their passing memories.
Why is Atisha saying their passing memories?
He could have stopped by saying,
Just regard all phenomena as a dream,
And although the experience may seem solid,
Just regard them as a dream.
So he could have stopped right there.
But he gives us an insight.
He says,
Their passing memories,
It's interesting,
What we call as memories,
Is something that has happened in the past.
Which means,
That everything that you are experiencing,
Everything that you are experiencing as the physical world,
As your mental world,
As your thoughts,
Emotions,
Whatever you are experiencing in your consciousness,
Is a past memory.
Strange notion,
Difficult to digest in the beginning,
But be open to it.
Try to understand what Atisha is trying to convey here.
He is saying,
These are all past memories,
These are all memories,
Which means,
This is all past.
Which means,
All what you are experiencing is past.
All what you are experiencing is simply repeating the past.
There is nothing new that you are experiencing.
There is nothing new that is arising in your consciousness.
Everything that is arising on the mental plane,
Or on the plane of your consciousness,
Or in your sensory perception,
Is all past.
Very interesting to go into it,
To explore it,
To understand it,
To meditate upon this.
In today's session,
We will meditate upon this insight from Atisha,
That all what's happening is past.
And that helps us to drop the past.
That allows us to drop the past,
So that finally,
Finally,
We could see something that is new.
Otherwise,
We are all throughout our lives,
Just repeating the past.
We may call it new,
We may call it future,
We may call it present,
But all what you are doing is repeating past.
One more component of this sutra I would like to explore today.
Atisha says,
Examine the nature of unborn awareness.
Pay attention to unborn awareness.
What is unborn?
Something that did not take birth,
Which means something that was always there.
All-pervading awareness,
All present awareness,
Eternal awareness.
Examine the nature of eternal awareness.
How do you separate the awareness that you have,
To understanding what is this eternal awareness?
See that the awareness that you have right now,
From your senses,
When you say,
I am aware of someone putting a hand on my hand or on my body,
That's sensory awareness.
That's just one part of the awareness that is arising out of this construct that we have of body and mind.
When we say,
I am aware of the thoughts,
I am aware of the physical world,
All this cognitive awareness,
This sensory awareness is only arising out of the body and mind.
If the body and mind are taken away,
There is no cognitive awareness,
There is no sensory awareness.
Atisha is not talking about this sensory or cognitive awareness.
He is talking about something that is even higher.
As an example,
When you go to sleep,
You don't have for a while the sensory awareness,
You don't have also in deep sleep the cognitive awareness of what's going on in your thoughts.
But still,
There is,
If you pay attention,
If you train yourself,
Still there is one level of awareness which is even higher,
Where you always know that you are aware,
Even you can be aware of your sleep.
Yogis train this,
They train to remain aware 24-7,
Even in their sleep,
Where they can be a silent observer of their sleep.
It's difficult to conceive,
It's tough to understand,
But take this insight from the meditation master,
Be open for the insight that Atisha is giving to us and telling us and pointing us to move towards this eternal awareness.
This awareness that does not arise from anywhere.
The cognitive,
The sensory,
All these awarenesses arise out of somewhere.
They arise out of the body,
They arise out of the mind or the brain,
If you will.
But since they arise out of somewhere,
They also can be closed,
They can also die if you are in sleep,
If you have some problems,
You may lose certain parts of awareness of your body and of your mind,
Of your thoughts.
But this eternal awareness,
Once you wake up to that,
There is no turning it off.
This in also several traditions,
Religions,
Also known as God.
When we say that there is an eternal awareness watching us,
That is God.
That is God awareness,
This eternal awareness which we can uplift ourselves to as well.
We can uprise to this awareness through meditation,
Through contemplation,
To purification of our consciousness where we move out of the contents of our mind and rise up to this eternal consciousness through which we perceive everything.
This consciousness was never created,
It can never be destroyed.
All you can do is tune yourself to it,
Come out of the mind that we are carrying which is all past and rise above to this eternal consciousness.
One last point I would like to take as well in today's meditation,
Very briefly and we will elaborate more on it tomorrow,
Self-liberate even the antidote.
For today's session,
What that means is once you reach to this awareness,
Once you have uplifted your awareness in silence,
In meditation,
Leave any technique that we follow,
Leave even the antidote and allow yourself to just be in silence,
Be in meditation for the rest of the minutes.
I would now invite you to close your eyes and move in contemplation,
In meditation with me for the next 10 to 15 minutes.
Take a deep breath in and out.
Whichever posture you have taken,
Make sure that your back is straight and your body is relaxed,
Your head is straight.
It doesn't matter if your hands are on your lap,
On your thighs,
Let them rest,
Let your whole body rest as you enter meditative silence for the next minutes.
Allow your breath to settle.
Your awareness to turn inwards.
You are arriving more and more in the present moment.
Remember the words of Atisha.
Regard everything as a dream,
As solid as it may seem,
They are all past memories.
Pay attention in today's session to everything that arises in your consciousness as a memory.
See,
Examine,
Explore the nature of anything that arises in your consciousness and see that this is just a memory,
Just past.
See,
Examine,
Explore the nature of anything that arises in your consciousness as a memory.
All thoughts,
Emotions,
Contents of your mind,
Anything,
That arises in your consciousness is memory,
Is past.
See it,
Observe it,
Validate it.
And drop all this past,
These memories,
These contents of your mind,
Allow all of this to settle like dust and your awareness rising upwards,
Your consciousness becoming purer with every breath that you take.
Now please take a short time to listen to our Notice there is this awareness that is in front of your eyes.
In front of your closed eyes,
There is also an awareness in the background,
An all prevalent awareness,
An eternal awareness in the background.
Explore the nature of this unborn awareness.
Explore the nature of this unborn awareness.
Explore the nature of this unborn awareness.
From the awareness in front of you,
To the awareness in the background,
All around you,
Wake up to this awareness all around you.
Explore the nature of this unborn awareness.
Explore the nature of this unborn awareness.
Explore the nature of this unborn awareness.
Let go in this awareness.
Let it take you wherever it takes you.
Melt with it.
Flow with it.
Let it dissolve in this eternal awareness all around you.
Let it dissolve in this eternal awareness all around you.
No effort,
Only silence,
An awareness inside you,
All around you.
Let go in it.
Let it dissolve in this eternal awareness all around you.
And very gently and slowly,
Awareness back to your breath,
To your body.
And you may open your eyes.
Maintain this silence,
This sense of eternal awareness as you proceed with your day to day.
And as you proceed with your day to day,
You may open your eyes.
And as you proceed with your day to day,
You may open your eyes.
And as you proceed with your day to day,
You may open your eyes.
And as you proceed with your day to day,
You may open your eyes.
Let it dissolve in this eternal awareness all around you.
