Nice sentient beings. Meditation is about bringing the body, speech or mind and consciousness into alignment. So it’s very important that before every meditation practice we practice or move through these three gates in some way, so move through the body, move through the breath and move through the mind. When moving the body, it is important to bend the spine in all directions.
You can practice yoga before meditation, and the idea is that by practicing forward backward right to left twists and choices, you can move your spine so that when you sit, you don’t feel your spine. So we should be in the mid-axis without holding ourselves from the spine and not with the muscles of the spine, so we gently tilt on the exhale, lean on the inhale, look up, hands on the knees on the exhale, arch the back on the inhale. Exhale, hunch inhale return to centre, clasp hands and exhale. Inhale, inhale arms up exhale lower back, fold and open chest with fingers crossed. Palms touching, arms outstretched, reaching down behind, opening chest looking up.
We release the posture. Very gently exhale to one side, inhale back, exhale to the other side, inhale back. Exhale. Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
And now we’re even on opposite knees. On the exhale we turn back.
Inhale back. With our other hand, we simply rest our arm against our back, turn over on the exhale.
Inhale back. Exhale.
We help the hand twist the back, inhale back, one last time.
And inhale back. We also move the shoulders, inhale up, exhale down. Inhale up, exhale down. Inhale up, exhale down. You can also move the shoulders back and forth a little.
And then also the head circle, let your head hang, inhale gently go back.
Exhale forward, making sure the shoulders stay down, inhale back.
Exhale forward.
Inhale in opposite directions.
Exhale, reverse inhale, exhale and gently let the shoulders hang. Pull or push downward at this time.
And stretch the spine up and slowly lift the head back.
It is also common to do a shaking exercise or a massage exercise beforehand, and everyone can decide what it is that brings their body to a state where they can sit completely still for at least 20 minutes, or longer if they can. It’s important in meditation that the body is trained, so that you can sit completely still, but it shouldn’t be cramped, so it should be joyful, it should be comfortable.
You have to find this position, you can use a cushion under the knees, or you can put a cushion under the buttocks to lift the hips a little bit, tilt the hips a little bit, so that the back is completely relaxed but straight. That the vertical back is a very important point. But it is not the spine that needs to be straight, but the midline from the top of the head to the point of the perineum.
We sit cross-legged, so if somebody can’t do it, you can sit with your knees bent in a Vajrasana, so in a kneeling seat, or you can sit with 2 legs between each other, so any kind of cross-legged seat is suitable for meditation. It is essential to be as stable as possible, with the feet resting firmly on the ground and the back upright, legs horizontal, back vertical. Posture in the middle position. Symmetry is important, we are in the middle and in meditation we rest our hands in meditation posture in the dhyana asana with the mindfulness of the mudra of unity in our lap.
In posture, the most important thing is to keep the back straight, but it is worth adjusting at smaller points. Shoulders should be open, the chest should be open, the heart should be open during meditation, the chin should be slightly closed, because the desires are the speech, and the speech is closed during meditation.
And if it works, we meditate with our eyes half closed, looking down, or if not, we close our eyes and turn inwards. We take
a long inhale and a long exhale, trying to get our breathing right.
You can count enough breath rhythm. On the count of 3 in 3 out.
And we decide why we are exercising so we move our minds. We raise the intention, let it be the intention of liberation. The intention of knowing ourselves, knowing ourselves, the intention of knowing our consciousness, or the intention of letting go of some obstacle, some trauma. The important thing is to define the intention in every practice, so we move the body so that we can become still, our breathing or breathing should be subtle and continuous and we raise the intention in our mind why we are practicing.
And then we bring our attention to the nostrils and focus on the cold and warm sensations there: inhaling, cold sensation, exhaling, warm sensation at the nostrils.
Now we’re going to go through the steps of this exercise quite quickly, so if anyone wants to take longer, feel free to stop the recording and take your time with the exercise. Whether it’s 5 or 10 minutes and then move on.
Our tongue touches the gums and the point where the teeth meet. We have a
relaxed whole body, but we have posture.
We allow the breath to flow naturally, only noticing that the nostrils feel cold on the inhale and warm on the exhale. We simply time the cold and warm sensations.
Then we slowly turn our attention down towards the belly.
And at the navel we observe the rise and fall. This is the practice of rising falling, which is included in both Southern Buddhism and Zen schools.
In other words, on inhalation we feel the belly expanding, on exhalation we feel it contracting, we observe spaciousness.
And then we connect these two focal points of attention, we connect them, so on inhalation we feel the air flowing towards the abdomen on exhalation we feel the air leaving the body through the nostrils, we feel the cold warmth, we feel the expansion, contraction and in between the two we feel the flow of the sensation of breathing, so we are practicing continuous attention.
Then comes the expansion of the third consciousness through breathing, we have been single-pointed, we have been continuous, now we are becoming expansive. So on the inhalation we feel the cold flowing in, the belly expanding outwards and in the process the air fills our whole body, and on the exhalation it leaves the body.
So we start to become aware of the whole body position with the breath, on inhalation it fills.
We feel the body in the arms in the legs breathing in, and on exhalation it leaves.
Then together we feel the whole body from head to toe.
This sensation is a bit like the sensation of a cloud, so we don’t feel the sensations exactly around the body.
They just follow the contours of the body.
Try to feel the whole body at once.
Within that, we can start to notice where there are cold sensations that are related to the water element. Warm sensations are related to the fire element.
Where there are light sensations, feelings of movement are related to the air element, and where there are heavy sensations, feelings of immobility are related to the fold element.
Observe the state of the 4 primal elements within the posture.
Meditation on the elements is a very high level practice a fast way to get to vipassana.
Now we leave this behind and turn our attention to the external space.
And we do this by listening to the sounds. We hear all the sounds at once.
We hear the booming beep inside the ear.
We hear the ticking of the clock.
The blowing of the wind.
The chirping of birds.
We don’t discriminate between sounds, we relax and let our mind expand outside.
And then we connect these two spaces: the outer space with the inner space, so now we use our breath again to breathe in. Communication between the outer world and the inner world, we breathe in the air of the outer world or we breathe in its energy.
It fills the body completely and then we exhale and expand into the outer space. We connect the two spaces.
We listen to the sounds very gently flowing through the breath while sensing the whole body and from head to toe.
This is called the 3 continuities practice body sensation continuity, breath and sound continuity.
And by allowing the spaces that are thus merged to expand, our consciousness begins to perceive the world around us.
But in a conscious way, the space of our imagination also expands our consciousness not only beyond the sounds, but beyond them.
And we perceive the world with our consciousness the beings living in it our own family members our close relatives and then the beings of the samsara, the animals.
Plants too.
Humans.
And we also begin to sense beings in the space of enlightenment of nirvana. Buddhas bodhisattvas.
And then we allow them to take form in our consciousness.
Let them appear in either form, in the sky above us and around us the buddhas bodhisattvas in their shining transparent form radiating light, radiating their wisdom light, and around us the sentient beings the suffering beings.
Openness to suffering beings, that’s compassion, openness to enlightened beings, that’s the essence of shelter devotion.
And then we begin communication by inhaling inhaling the light of wisdom of the enlightened and exhaling out to sentient beings. Their emanation is that desire in the form of light. Would that all beings were happy.
Light pours into our hearts. From our heart also emanates the light of wish.
This practice of love combined with breathing, compassion, we become open to the suffering of sentient beings, and we have this wish that we wish their suffering would cease. Inhaling, we spend time in the wisdom light of the enlightened ones, inhaling, filling ourselves with it, and exhaling, we radiate this intention towards sentient beings, towards our family members. And of course to our enemies, to all beings.
That they might be free from suffering.
The co-pleasure, which means to become open to the pleasures of sentient beings.
To the joy of all beings, if they are joyful, we are joyful, and we have this wish that their happiness may not pass away.
On inhaling, we breathe
the wisdom-light of the enlightened ones into our hearts, and on exhaling, the lights from our hearts are shed forth with the wish that they may not pass away from the state of happiness.
And finally, the absence of a sense of distance or oneness.
Practice, which means seeing all beings as family, regardless of our relationship to them. They are
thus bound by attachment to loved ones or unloved by repulsion, and we wish that the samsara would cease to have attachment and hatred or repulsion and obscurity of consciousness or not knowing. I wish that the 3 causes of samsara would cease from every being.
Breathe in the wisdom light of the enlightened and exhale this wish.
Realize that all beings desire the same thing, to be free from suffering, to achieve a free, happy wise existence.
In this sense, we are completely equal.
When one attains realization in the bodhicitta of intention, it is said that the intention aspect of enlightenment consciousness is manifested in him.
The bodhicitta is like a mirror and will see the buddhas. It is from
this state that the buddhas are born, and we imagine that it is from this state that Green Tara is born before us.
From the ocean of bodhicitta.
Where lotus blossom grows with multicoloured petals and sits at the centre of the world, moon disc on the mirror, the mirror of compassion reflects the Green Tara, the form of the fearlessness of the buddhas, the wisdom of fearlessness without fear.
Her body is graceful, beautiful.
It is a joy to look at and radiates the power of the Buddha wisdom of fearlessness to help all beings.
The larger the brighter it shines in the light of
1,000 suns the more transparent and thus intangible we imagine it to be without substance.
It breaks the light of the whole universe not only on us but on all sentient beings. Especially the sick and the light of help shines.
And we integrate the light with the mantra of Tuteri Turismo. It
fills us and fills all beings.
[mantra]
We get lost in the feeling, the glow.
We let go of all imagination, visualisation, intention, and are purely relaxed, present in the result of the practice.
And then we allow the waters in our consciousness to churn again, the world to appear, sentient beings to appear, and we give way to the intention to dedicate the merits of this practice, along with all our good deeds, to wishing that all beings would be free from disease, and that all beings who are healthy would maintain their health, now we dedicate the practice specifically to this, in addition to wishing that all beings would step onto the path of liberation.
We seal this intention with the mantra of the horn mangalam. On the horn we join our hands before the heart and from the heart we make an offering to the mangalam.
We raise the will. It is
the power of the flock that is of great help in sickness. It is invoked in epidemics and the exercises are now dedicated to this.
[Sarva manalam mantra]
Gently rub the palms together and when it feels warm, put it on the eyes.
We move the eyes to the right and left blinking very hard blinking rapidly and slowly letting the light in.
Massage the face, massage the head.
Massage the earlobes and the back of the head from front to back.
With crossed hands, massage shoulders in a circular motion.
Well along the length of the arms.
Round the chest.
Hossa round the torso.
Circularly the kidneys and lower down, circularly the hips, then lengthwise the thighs.
Round the knees.
Longitudinally the lower leg and then rub the soles of the feet in a circular motion.
Gently shake hands.
And then release the hands to the knees with palms up and sigh three times. Imagine breathing in freshness through the nose and exhaling any fatigue or obstacles that have arisen with meditation through the mouth.
Inhalation.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to practice together, this practice combined the practices of individual liberation, the development of awareness in the Theravada tradition, and then in the Mahayana system, the development of Bodhicitta.