Namaste and welcome to this daily live meditation session with me,
Dhyansay.
You think you had a good sleep for 6 hours,
7 hours,
8 hours and now you're awake.
But that sleep is just a sleep of senses.
You could not hear,
You could not see,
You could not touch and all what you perceive through your senses.
You were asleep to that and now you're awake,
Meaning your senses are back.
But that's just one kind of sleep.
These sessions,
30 minute spirituality and meditation sessions with me will wake you up out of another kind of sleep that you have been sleeping all throughout your life.
There is another kind of sleep which is not the sleep towards sense perceptions but towards the truth,
Towards the truth of who you are,
Towards the truth,
The true nature of oneself.
Towards our construct,
How we are constructed as human beings,
What is this experience of life and how to navigate ourselves through life,
Through this journey that we call life.
So please join me in these sessions every day,
30 minutes to wake ourselves out of a different kind of sleep that we have been asleep for all this time and running in kind of an autonomous vehicle.
Today we talk about technology trying to bring the comfort of autonomous vehicles to us but to see the same as an example that we are going through our life in kind of an autonomous vehicle,
In kind of an asleep.
We are sleeping in the backseat where this vehicle is going wherever it wants to go and we have no control.
We have no control on where this is going,
How,
Where to go and how to drive this to where we want to go.
So these sessions,
These few minutes of contemplation and meditation every day will wake you up from your backseat and put you into the driving seat of your own body,
Of your own mind,
Of your own life.
In this journey we took a stop at Tibetan Buddhism where we are right now exploring the mind training of Atysa who was a meditation master who gave seven points of mind training.
Why this mind training?
Because when you wake up and you are in the driving seat you need to know what you are doing,
How to use your mind.
We all are given a mind.
We apparently are in control of it.
We apparently are utilizing it but most often we are just driving randomly.
The mind is taking us right,
Left,
Up,
Down,
Here and there and we are just a victim of the mind and not the master of our own mind.
So these seven points of mind training are to train your mind towards emptiness which is to be able to put the mind aside and let your heart and spirit open up and see the world.
It is a training into love,
It is a training into compassion.
It is not a religious training but for us to learn from these valuable sources of knowledge,
Valuable sources of wisdom how we can bring this emptiness,
Love,
Compassion into our life.
Right now we are on point number three where Atysa is expounding on how to transform adversity into a path towards awakening.
We all have moments of adversity,
Lesser or more.
We all go through the ups and downs of life.
In the ups,
Who cares what is wisdom,
What is peace,
What is silence,
What is meditation and so on.
Who cares because when it is up,
When you are high,
Everything is amazing.
You are on a certain rush,
You are on a certain high and the world looks different.
But what about when there is adversity?
What about when there is a low?
That's the time to wake up.
That's the chance to wake up and Atysa is emphasizing on converting this adversity,
This chance to wake up,
This adversity to become a path to awakening,
To wake up,
To become a path towards awakening.
To become more conscious,
To become more loving,
To become more compassionate.
For today's sutras from Atysa's 7 point mind training,
I just have a few lines,
Very simple lines.
Let me go through them first before we understand how they,
What they mean to our life and how they impact our life.
Atysa says,
When beings and the world are filled with evil,
Transform unfavorable circumstances into the path of bodhi.
Drive all blame into one.
Be grateful to everyone.
Yesterday we discussed what is this evil?
We understood that this evil is unconsciousness.
It is not a separate force from coming out of cosmos from somewhere.
It is this very same existence which is in sometimes unconsciousness and sometimes consciousness.
When we experience consciousness,
We experience pleasure,
We experience light,
We experience all the goodness,
All the kindness,
Love,
Compassion,
Joy of this world.
But when we experience unconsciousness,
That becomes the root of what we call as evil that creates the misery for us and for everyone around us in our life.
That's what we said yesterday and we move on to the next very simple line which Atysa says.
It's beautiful how he puts everything in such simple words.
He says,
Drive all blame into one.
Drive all blame into one.
Such a simplification of all the miseries.
No matter in which misery you are,
No matter what you are going through in life,
No matter what the world is going through in its collective sense of things,
All the misery that is being created,
Drive all the blame into one.
Who is that one?
You yourself.
That one is you yourself.
Of course,
When the mind hears this,
It retaliates.
It doesn't want to hear that I am the source,
Am I the problem creator?
Yes,
Yes,
Your mind would not let you believe that.
Your mind would not let you accept that.
But you are creating all the misery for yourself.
There is no one else to blame than you yourself.
Only you have to give a chance to yourself for your mind to not disturb,
Put it out of the way and see,
Come to terms with what's happening and you will see that you yourself are the source of all the misery,
All the evil that you are creating for yourself and for everyone else around.
If you see what's happening in the world,
All the unrest in the name of race,
In the name of color,
How are we responding to that?
We are driving the blame to the other.
We are driving the blame to a concept.
We are driving the blame on some object,
On some inanimate object that is not us.
All the time we are trying to push the blame onto the other.
Perhaps it is done because we don't want to look into our own self.
If we do that,
The fear will come out that we all are the source of the misery that is happening in the world.
Somewhere deep down we are having all these divisions in our mind and in our view of the world that we reflect consciously or unconsciously out in our actions.
And the moment there is some unrest,
We start blaming the other for that and we start acting like that.
Does that solve the problem?
No.
Until we look within,
Until we drive all the blame,
As Atisha says,
Drive all the blame,
Meaning despite your mind trying not to see that,
Drive that conversation,
Drive that opening to blame yourself.
When I say blame,
Blame does not mean self-condemnation,
Blame does not mean that you start beating yourself up for that.
It just means that you see the source of the misery,
That you see that everything is rooted in our own mind,
In our own beings.
And we need to uplift ourselves from where we are to a higher consciousness,
To a more purer internal state so that we can rise above and convert this adversity that we are experiencing into a chance of waking up of having purer consciousness and move towards emptiness,
Love,
Compassion.
What comes along is another small sutra from Atisha that be grateful to everyone.
In this process,
While you are going through adversity,
Because when you are not going through adversity,
Of course you are grateful to everything,
You do not care about anything.
And if you care,
You are grateful to those who are taking you into,
Who are the cause of the goodness that is happening in your life.
But when you are in adversity,
That is the moment to be grateful to everyone.
Here once again,
The mind says,
Why should I be grateful to my enemy?
Why should I be grateful to something that has caused my adversity?
And this is the time to train the mind,
To tell the mind to be grateful to everyone.
Why?
Because we are all interconnected.
Every person,
Every object,
Every situation,
Every element in this universe is creating the circumstances for us to rise above,
To expand our consciousness,
To take ourselves out of our raw,
Crude nature of the mind,
To rise above and live ourselves as pure consciousness.
Every circumstance is pointing towards that.
Every situation is creating that opportunity for us to rise above our mind and all our misery creation that is in us.
And that is why we should be grateful to everyone.
A very small anecdote.
There was a saint,
He was talking about silence,
Love,
Compassion for a long time and he had lots of disciples who were also with him practicing silence,
Love,
Compassion.
One day in his discourse,
Someone from the audience,
He got upset with what this saint was saying.
So,
He came up to the front and spat on the face of the saint.
The disciples who were in the front row,
Who had been following the saint for a very long time,
One of them,
He saw this and immediately he got so angry,
He jumped onto the guy to stop him,
To put him aside,
To bring the security in and take him down.
But in the middle of this,
The saint stopped his disciple,
He looked at the man who spat on him,
He said,
Thank you very much for creating this opportunity for me to see that when you are bringing unrest in me,
I am still centered,
I am still at rest.
And look at this disciple,
It is also an opportunity for him.
So,
He should also be grateful to you that because you created this opportunity,
He sees that his silence is fragile,
His meditation is weak.
He needs to build the silence more,
He needs to strengthen his inner centering so that when misery happens,
When evil happens,
When something happens,
He is not thrown off.
He is not thrown off his center and he is not acting out of just impulses of his mind.
So,
That's the message of Atisha.
In very simple words,
Drive the blame to the one meaning to yourself and be grateful to everyone.
Let us practice that in our meditation while we are sitting in silence.
You will see that lots of a thousand and one reasons will arise where they will try to break your silence.
Drive the blame onto yourself.
See that you being disturbed,
You being not at your center is because of you yourself,
Of nothing else.
No distraction is to blame but yourself.
And at the same time,
When you are settling back in your silence,
As being grateful to this process,
Be grateful and thankful to everyone without exception,
Not just the ones that are your friends but also to your enemies,
To the whole world,
Without even actually dividing between friends and enemies.
Just be grateful to this whole existence in those moments of silence.
With that,
Let us close our eyes and take the next moments to contemplate,
Meditate,
Move towards silent awareness.
Thank you.
Close your eyes if you haven't already and sit in a posture that is comfortable for you,
Where your back is straight.
And you can let go of your body for the next 10 to 15 minutes.
Awareness turned inwards.
See that the source of all your experience is you yourself.
You are feeling pleasant or in pain.
You are feeling rested or restless.
You are the source.
There is no one else to blame.
And drive all experiences,
All sources of the experiences to you yourself.
You are the source.
If events from the past arise in your consciousness,
See that you were always the source of all your experience.
See that you were always the source of your experience.
You are crying,
You are laughing,
You enjoy happiness,
Sadness,
All what you experienced.
You created them.
You are the source.
You are the source.
A sudden awakening,
Empowerment happens when you see you are the source.
You are the source.
And move towards silence with every breath.
Leaving all behind.
You are the source.
You are the source.
In these moments of silence,
Be grateful that you are alive.
Be grateful that you are healthy.
Be grateful that you have a chance to be part of this world with everyone else.
Be grateful to everyone without exception to everyone.
And very gently and slowly,
You may open your eyes while maintaining this awareness,
Silence,
Sense of gratefulness for the entire world and seeing,
Recognizing oneself as the source of all experience,
Good,
Bad and the ugly.
Contemplate over it.
Hold it in your awareness for today and I will see you tomorrow.
Namaste.
