The Intention of Training
Formal Training
Before doing shamata/vipassana meditation, we do prayers
and some breathing purification, and some stretches. Our training,
our sadhana, includes shamata/vipassana calming/insight meditation,
and then Lam Rim, stages of path practice, which involve taking
and sending. The Bramaviharas, which are abodes of brahma,
include developing equanimity, loving-kindness, compassion,
sympathetic joy, reflecting on the paramitas. The paramitas
are the perfections of giving, patience, discipline, joyous
effort, meditation, and wisdom. We also do some devata yoga,
with visualizing a form of the Buddha. As we do this yoga,
we do that Buddha’s mantra, that practice. Finally,
letting the mind rest in some completion meditation. Buddha
dissolves into you and you just rest in the nature. Just rest
in presence.
It sounds like a lot, but actually in about 35 minutes, half
an hour, it’s possible to go through these different
stages so we get a sense of our place. When we get up in the
morning, we may notice some body issue, like today I’m
kind of stiff in the lower back. Doing an asana for that helps
bring the energy and flow back into that area. We don’t
have to do 108 asanas for our daily yoga practice, right?
But because of various imbalances or what we may need we can
do some key postures and then, based on our needs, work with
that.
Before starting our morning practice, before doing a more
inner kind of yoga, we have to energize ourselves and balance
our most basic breathing, musculature, and body or else we
won’t be prepared to do inner yoga. A lot of Buddhism
talks about the inner yoga work. Imaginal yoga is inner work
because that’s where very subtle but deep changes are
going to happen. People forget that there is a lot before
that.
We can actually do a bit of this every day and then when
we’re on retreat or when we have time later during the
week or on the weekends, we can concentrate on different aspects.
We could say well, I want to concentrate on shamata practice.
Just letting the mind rest on one object or mantra or image
or the breath. Or, I just want to do vipassana style, there
are different levels of that. But doing insight meditation,
looking inside for nature of self, you might want to do half-an-hour
of tonglen.
Daily Practice
During the day, continuing the skills from the sadhana is
called practice. During the day we are recalling the view
from this inner work. The view is both the beginning and the
end in the sense that recalling the view means we’re
noticing that indeed things operate from an aspect of interdependence.
Things come together through causes and conditions. We are
keeping an idea of what we’re doing. Keeping in mind
the four thoughts that change the mind. Keeping in mind that
we’ll we’re basically here to transcend repetitive
suffering patterns to go to developing in spontaneous liberation
patterns. Just kind of remembering that. Oh! Oh, okay!
We sometimes have a picture of our kids or something, a spouse,
on the desk. It’s like Oh! Well, why am I doing this
job? That’s called view.
During the activity of the day we try to continue the meditation,
staying connected with our body, our breath, and our awareness
in each activity so that we’re basically maintaining
a certain sense of equanimity during the day. Our activity
is what we’re doing as our work, as our activity. We’re
noticing what we’re doing. Oh, well this is my job,
I’m doing this. I’m expressing myself this way.
Dharma practice is pretty straightforward. It has a formal
aspect where we’re doing a formal yoga. We’re
doing karma yoga or activity during the day. It’s pretty
straightforward don’t you think? Basically in both,
dharma runs through both - what we call training and practice.
Self Concept
By training and practicing we’re abandoning a limited
idea of self, the very limited and constricted idea of who
we are, and making ourselves available to an expanded understanding.
This is tricky. It’s not just a little idea here. Do
we change the little self, and make that version bigger? That’s
our normal ego’s idea of enlightenment. It’s like
enlightenment is thought to be just a bigger and better little
self.
Particular self is like a boat on the ocean. The ocean, with
the waves, is true self. The ocean is not worried about the
waves, right? The ocean doesn’t worry. The nature of
ocean is waves. It could be really storming, but the ocean
is not worried. Where is the water going to go?
But a boat on the ocean may be worried. The boat wants it
calm because the boat’s worried about capsizing and
journeying from one place to another. So, little boat just
wants maybe a little bit of wind, just right. Just moving
a little bit.
The individual particular self wants everything to always
be just right. We want the ocean just this way. We’re
not interested in seeing the ocean as ocean. We’re not
interested in seeing that ocean is wet, ocean is broad, or
that ocean contains all things. We’re just interested
in seeing ocean as a medium to sail through to get to the
other side. That's called particular self.
There’s a value to particular self. We have to have
our driver’s license and our job and so forth. But,
we get very confused if we think it’s the job of the
ocean to support particular self. It’s the job of the
particular self to learn how to negotiate the ocean rather
than the other way around. Ocean is just being ocean. Sometimes
it’s wavy, sometimes it’s wild.
Actually, practice is very easy. Practice and training is
very easy but we make it hard because want to take the little
boat and make it just a bigger boat in a calmer ocean. Makes
sense right? We can awaken to a much bigger vision of seeing
the boat and the ocean and the waves and the wind all as mandala.
We normally don’t approach things that way.
We normally approach everything that I want and I need as
foreground and everything that I don’t want and don’t
need as background. The boat wants to just get to the port.
That’s foreground. We want the waves just the right
way. If the particular self’s wants weren’t always
in foreground, what would the world look like. It doesn’t
mean that the particular self goes away or that the wants
aren’t important. But what does the world look like
from ocean’s perspective?
That’s why we do the training and practice. We’re
awakening to big self which isn’t against individual
self or getting individual self’s needs met, it’s
part of a bigger story. So that’s very liberating to
be part of a bigger story. Actually, we usually get really
tired of our little stories don’t we? I do. Probably
after a while we get really tired of everybody’s little
stories.
Training and practice is movement away from a limited perspective
to a bigger perspective. This doesn’t mean that we just
leave smaller perspective behind. Bigger perspective means
that we also appreciate small perspective.
Role of the Teacher
We need a teacher, and we need teachings, and we need some
kind of gyroscope to help us in this developmental process.
The quest for comfort and security is extremely strong and
the tendency to see liberation as just a bigger, better, more
functioning ego is generally what’s called spiritual
materialism. Trungpa Rinpoche coined this term.
Spiritual practice may seem difficult because sometimes,
when we feel like we’re really kind of getting somewhere,
our teachers and sangha members might not think we’re
getting anywhere. Then maybe we think they’re jerks!
Then when it looks like nothing is happening then maybe our
sangha members and our teachers like us better... It seems
like something’s wrong. Something has gone wrong!
That’s why reading biographies of teachers and students
of the past is a very important part of the process. It helps
us keep our perspective in mind. One of my teachers said to
Buddhist students, everybody likes to admire Jesus, but nobody
wants to get on the cross. Everybody likes to admire the Buddha,
but Buddha was up on his cross. If you do enough sitting meditation,
a lot of yoga, eventually you’ll probably wish that
somebody would string you up - you just want to stretch!
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