First,
Just stop and think of your intention,
The surface intention,
The next one below that and below that until you come to your real motivation for doing this practice right now.
Raise the left hand,
Draw a circle in the air and blow that smoky stuff out of your right nostril.
So the red or the white channel becomes brighter and clearer.
Now circle with the other hand,
Blow out the left side and now that color,
Whichever you didn't do,
You do that side and it's clearer and brighter.
Now we circle again,
The smoke comes out and we're getting down to even a clear,
Brighter color of red or white and the other side.
And now each side is going to become perfectly clear and bright red or white.
And now the dingy blue in the middle that's ignorance,
Delusion,
Sleepiness,
Any of that,
You're going to blow out three times through both nostrils.
It gets cleaner and clearer every time.
The last time perfectly clear,
Bright blue and blowing through the mouth,
Relaxing into a gentle straight spine,
Supple and straight and breathing gently through the mouth.
The tip of the tongue is touching where the upper teeth meet the upper palate and our spine is like we're a marionette hanging from a string from the back top of the head to the ceiling so it just sort of naturally hangs into place.
And we begin with the 21 breaths,
So focusing on the breath and that's all we have to do.
We're not even thinking about the breath.
We're just experiencing directly the breathing.
Remember the gaze is down,
Helping the mind to settle.
We're savoring that moment between in breath and out breath,
Out breath and in breath.
Take a little pause in that stillness.
And as always,
When you find your mind wandering after a thought,
Just notice,
Ah,
I remembered.
That's a good thing.
And then bring it back to shamatha,
Back to your breath and settle into that,
Savoring that.
The thoughts can come and go and it's sort of like this flow.
Imagine it's like your hand,
Your open hand has a rope passing over it,
A long,
Long rope.
And you can feel it passing over your hand.
You just don't have to grab a hold of it and be pulled off your seat.
It's all just passing through.
Let's apply that to our theme for this session,
Which is using sound as support.
So there may be sounds that come and go,
Some that are fairly constant.
And it's like that rope passing over your hand.
We're aware,
We register this and we just remain here.
So it's not that we have these thoughts about the sounds,
Just the sounds passing through.
Now we shift gears to the tong-lin practice.
So pick a theme for this session,
Something that's up for you.
So it might be frustration about a situation with somebody that you yourself are experiencing.
Some situation might be frustrating or there might be a situation such as a health issue,
Physical pain.
So pick that issue that's really up for you and that's causing you some discomfort.
And bring your small suffering self either in front of you or inside your heart.
And you feel compassion for this one who's suffering.
You want to take away that suffering and replace it with happiness,
Not just relief of suffering,
Not just temporary little happiness,
But great,
Big,
Forever joy and happiness.
And so you breathe in the dark clouds of the suffering,
Taking it into your heart,
And breathe out the bright clouds,
Seeing them soak into this suffering one and replacing that suffering with joy.
Posing your eyes helps with the visualization.
Now bring to mind somebody else who might have suffered something similar.
Maybe they're suffering from that right now.
So we don't breathe in the story or the particular illness or whatever the situation is,
But rather the suffering itself.
Breathe in the dark clouds of that suffering feeling into your heart to take it away from this one who's dear to you.
You naturally want to replace it with happiness and so you breathe out the bright clouds,
Seeing them soak into that one.
Now you might bring another person to mind who you know,
Who you feel good feelings toward.
It's easy to feel compassion for them.
Maybe they've suffered in a similar way and you breathe for them.
You might think of people who are in your building or people you don't know very well at work and imagine that surely they've experienced a similar suffering and you want to take away their suffering too and replace it with happiness.
So the compassion is just rolling out and increasing,
This strong feeling of compassion rolling out in all directions.
You imagine them gathered around you in a circle and you breathe for all of them.
And their faces are transforming into bright,
Happy,
Joyful faces.
Remember to keep the in-breaths of taking in the suffering and the out-breaths of the joyful clouds.
Keep them even.
And then we think that everyone,
Everywhere,
There are many different versions of this same kind of suffering.
So we begin to think,
For example,
If it's physical difficulty,
We imagine people in hospitals,
People with various physical ailments,
And we don't want them to suffer from this,
So we breathe for them.
And then we step it out to the last rung,
Which is really all beings,
Because at some time or another they've also suffered from this or something similar.
So we breathe for all of them.
At this point,
Our sort of waves of compassion have gotten bigger and stronger,
And so we really feel we don't want any of them to suffer.
We want all of them to be permanently,
Ultimately happy.
And so we breathe in all directions for all of them.
Now we bring our minds back to shamatha.
We open the eyes,
Keep the gaze down,
Yet the back is supple and straight,
And we tune into sound again.
It's a little bit like we're transparent and the sounds are just passing through.
And perhaps you might see,
Can I keep my mind on this focus of sound for one whole breath?
However,
Many times we bring our minds back,
It's a mini session within the session,
And it's actually good to have many mini sessions.
So before rushing off,
You might just savor this for a moment,
How I feel right now.
And then we say the other bookend of the session,
We recite the dedication.
By the power of this compassionate practice,
May suffering be transformed into peace.
May the hearts of all beings be open and their wisdom radiate from within.
