Gyatso Meditation (Lecture by the 14th Dalai Lama)

School of the Golden Rod of Wisdom

Ithaca, New York

I am very happy to come to your center. I know something about your activities here, I admire your views and goals - to know many systems. I intend to explain briefly and in general terms certain points, and then we can talk informally. If you ask: "Do people have rights?", I will answer: "Yes, they do."

What is it to have human rights? The idea of ​​them arises on the basis of the actual innate manifestation of the Self in our minds and consists in the fact that we naturally want happiness and do not want suffering. It is the desire to be happy and not to suffer that is the basis of the argument for the existence of human rights.

Many levels of happiness can be achieved and suffering can be alleviated. Millions and millions of people in this world are looking for a way to find happiness and eliminate suffering and consider what they have found to be the best way. All the big schemes of world development, i.e. 5-year or 10-year plans, arise from the desire for happiness. Those gathered here today are looking for a means different from the usual in bringing happiness and lessening pain. We mainly deal with techniques based on the ability to internally change thinking.

In the past, many sages have outlined the techniques of correction, exercise, transformation of consciousness, and it is very important for us to respect all systems that teach us to love a person and pursue common goals. By honoring and studying the different systems, each one will discover unique, most useful and suitable techniques to practice them. We must do this because such teachings are of little value unless they are practiced in our daily lives.

Directions of philosophical thought can be applied to teach the discipline of the mind and the sequence of its conclusions. But meditation is the most important thing, especially in the early stages of cultivation. Perhaps today, when I explain this topic, we could start a practice session.

First of all, pay attention to your posture: fold your legs in the most comfortable position, keep your spine straight, like an arrow. Place your hands in a position of meditative balance: at a distance of four fingers below the navel, place your left hand under your right, and connect your thumbs so that they formed a triangle. This placement of the hands is related to the point within the body from which the internal heat radiates.

Leaning your neck slightly, leave your mouth and teeth alone as usual, and touch the tip of your tongue to the palate near your upper teeth. Let the eyes look intently and freely, for this it is necessary that they be directed to the tip of the nose; they may also be directed to the floor in front of you if that seems more natural. Do not open your eyes too wide or forcibly close them, leave them slightly open. Sometimes they will close on their own, this is normal. Even if your eyes are open, when your mental consciousness is firmly established on the object, what you see with your eyes will not disturb you.

Those of you who wear glasses, remember that with the glasses off, you will be less dangerous when you are excited and more dangerous when you are relaxed. Can you then make out the wall in front of you? When she is in front of you, try to determine what is less dangerous - excitement or absent-mindedness. These kinds of decisions can only come through your own experience.

For meditation on the object of contemplation, there is a division of objects into external and internal. Let's start meditating on the external object of contemplation. For example, it could be the body of a Buddha for those who like to look at the Buddha, or a cross for those who like it, or some other suitable symbol. Mentally imagine this object about four feet (~1.3 m) in front of you at eyebrow height. The object must be approximately 2 inches (~5 cm) tall and emit light. Try to take it as if heavy, as this will calm you down, and its brilliance will prevent you from dissipating. When you concentrate, make efforts in two directions: first, make the object of contemplation clear, and second, make the vision steady.

Is anything to your mind? Are your eyes disturbed by sense objects in front of you? In this case, it would be correct to close them, but with closed eyes, is not a reddish vision to you? If, when you close your eyes, you see red and you are worried about how you will see with your own eyes, this means that you are too involved in the processes of visual consciousness. Then you should try to divert your attention from the vision and transfer it to the processes of mental consciousness.

Causes hindering sustainability object of contemplation, shaking it, consist either in excitation, or, speaking generally, in absent-mindedness. The task is to stop it, to direct your mind strictly inward so that the intensity of the ability to grasp begins to decrease. To withdraw the mind from the outside will help thinking about what makes you more reasonable and a little sad. These thoughts can enhance your perception of the object, for the being of consciousness is too subtle. In order to lower or lose something, you had better learn to linger on the object of contemplation.

It is not enough to have stability alone. You also need to be clean. The acquisition of purity is hindered by relaxation, which is caused by excessive inclinations of consciousness. At first, the mind becomes loose, and this can lead to lethargy, in which, losing the object of contemplation, you seem to fall into darkness. From this you can even fall asleep. When this happens, it is necessary to raise or increase the faculty of perception. Technically, it looks like this: think about something you like that gives you joy, or mentally go to a high platform from where a vast view opens up. This technique will cause the drooping mind to multiply the possibilities of grasping the object.

Through your own experience, you need to determine when the perceptual faculty becomes too agitated or too relaxed, and decide on the best practice to lower or increase accordingly.

The object of contemplation, which you represent as visible, must be held in the mind by attention. You are watching all this intently, as if from around a corner, until you see the object clearly and firmly. The ability to engage in such peeping is called self-observation. It occurs when a strong sustained attention is achieved, but an unusual function of self-observation may include watching the mind from time to time - whether it is under the influence of excitement or relaxation. When you develop attention and self-observation well, you will be able to grasp the causes of relaxation and excitability before they take effect and prevent them from arising.

This briefly explains meditation and the conditions for its implementation on an external object of contemplation. Another type of meditation is to look at the mind itself. Try to leave your mind abiding in a natural way, that is, not thinking about what happened in the past or what you are planning for the future, and also not doing conceptual and theoretical work. Don't you think that this is consciousness itself? How to deal with the eyes? You probably think that this kind of exercise is connected with the eyes, since most of our awareness of the world is established by sight. This is due to our excessive trust in the senses.

However, the existence of a separate mental consciousness can be verified, for example: when attention is distracted by sound, what appears before the eyes is not noticed. This indicates a mental consciousness separate from the sensory consciousness, paying more attention to the sound imprinted by the auditory consciousness than to the perceptions of the visual consciousness.

Through persistent practice, consciousness can in time be perceived or felt as the essence of the only bright light and knowledge in which something can manifest itself and in which, when the right conditions arise, the image of any object can be created. And until the mind encounters the external premises of conceptual and analytical rationality, it will remain empty, without any givenness in it, like pure water. Its essence is given only in experience. Realizing this nature of the mind, we place the object of contemplation inside from the very beginning, according to the inner type of meditation. It is best to practice it in the morning, in a quiet place, when the mind is especially clear and alert.

There is another way of meditation which is adapted to recognize the absolute nature of phenomena. On the whole, phenomena are divided into two kinds: mental and physical aggregates, or the phenomena used by the Self, and the Self using them. To define the nature of this Self, let me use an example. When you say, "John will come," you are talking about a person called John. Does the name mean his body? No. Does it mean his mind? If it meant his mind, we could not speak of John's mind. The body and the mind are that by which the personality operates. There seems to be a Self separate from mind and body. For example, we think: “Oh, my disgusting body!”, Or: “Oh, my weak mind!” Isn't it true that in this case our innate idea of ​​our mind is