8 Lecture Full body awareness and questions dream yoga instructions

2020-08fullbodyandquestions_Dream yoga instructions.mp3 [00:00:00] So this is the full body awareness, the part of mindfulness of breathing to cultivate relaxation, and is also called the Infirmary because you can always go to these practice, specially you can do it in the savasana posture, and it’s very good to balance again when you’re pushing too hard. So these two practices so we did today, the drop and this one, the full body awareness, always keep them with you. Whenever you feel that you’re being too uptight, come back to them. Even if doing a session, your start feeling tension or some pressure in your heart or your head, come back to these practices because they’re very good to release and to find balance.

[00:00:54] The other practice we did this afternoon: bare attention and choiceless awareness, you can practice them in between sessions, when you go for a walk, doing laundry or washing dishes, or wherever you were doing, you can practice being attentive to what you’re doing.

[00:01:15] We have to be dharma bodies here, and even we’re in silence, if we notice a person is missing sessions or feeling bad or something, tell, please tell to myself or somebody here, from the stuff so that we can support each other. So I don’t have any written questions…

[00:01:41] Can you say something a nice, open or closed?. In the Chumpadata retreat we were trained to have eyes open, to keep eyes open, to keep us from centralizing angrily. I’m sure to integrate this approach, it were drowsy and prone to sleep, should we leave the session or try to remain with the practice?

[00:02:12] Yeah, sometimes when we have eyes closed we can get more distracted because we go into our interior cinema and start displaying our own movies there, and forget we’re here and we’re meditating. But for other people, it help relax, so you can try whatever feels best for you. Sometimes, naturally, your eyes will want to be closed and very relaxed, but you will be able to meditate good. And especially for mindfulness of breathing is OK whatever you choose. If you open a little bit your eyes and relax the gaze, like one meter or one meter and a half in front of you, without focusing on the visual appearances which are just resting there. That’s also helpful or letting some light coming in because that brings you also to this moment and helps when there’s so much wandering, distraction. Try to think what feels good for you and maybe, for some of you, some sessions with the eyes open, and sessions with the eyes close. Eventually we want to learn to meditate with the eyes open for some meditations. For mindfulness of breathing is not necessary, but for example, for settling the mind at its natural state, or taking the mind as the path, which is also called, or for shammatha without a sign, or open awareness is better to practice with the eyes open because these practices are more closer to the Shoksen Mahamudra tradition practice, in which you want to eventually have an open presence and let everything happened. But this is also, a good point to mention here is that in these traditions there’s people that receive some teaching, something they think they’re doing Dzochen practice or Mahamudra practice, but they’re just doing this kind of bare attention. They’re very similar because in their Dzochen tradition, also Mahamudra, they have practice called open prescence, but in order to do it correctly, you need to have receive pointed out instructions from a teacher. Your life and your practice have to be fully immersed in this teaching of the view, meditation and conduct. You have to have an understanding of emptiness. So it’s not like you just are here open presence and then you’re practicing Dzochen or Mahamudra, which some people think they are doing. That’s something to clarify at the end of the retreat, so you do more confidently about this.

[00:05:01] And yeah. But you can do either for whatever works for you. And if you’re feeling drowsy and falling asleep, try to focus on the inbreath, straight your back. Use less layers of clothes if you’re colder, you’ll be more awake. If you’re warmer, you’ll tend to be more relaxed, or more sleep. If there’s more light, you will feel more clarity. If there’s more dark, the room, you will tend to fall more asleep. So it’s a balancing act and it’s important to find your balance, but if it si too much like you’re in that, you can feel a little bit of drowsiness, a little bit of sleepiness, and then you’ll wake up and you’ll go back to sharp. But if you reached that point where you’re fine and sleep and you can’t bring you back like it’s really hard, then it’s better to stop the session, maybe put some cold water in your face, and maybe do some stretching. And then once you regain their vividness, then just sit it again. Don’t interrupt it immediately, tried to to apply the antidotes and see if you can balance it back.

[00:06:17] There’s similar one here: ¿Can you explain the four yogas of time, the cycle of time, etc. Should we have a nerve Buddha natures? Why does Samsara exist? How did you find your path?. How does one find one? Very good question. What is special about twin split consciousness? I have a desire for others to be liberated before myself. Is this an obstacle to Shamatha practice or is it helpful? Well, these are very philosophical questions. Maybe we will address some of these questions during the retreat.

[00:06:51] Now it’s important that we focus on practice, and as we go along we will be coaching different topics and exploring the different paths and what they teach us. We will also discuss a little bit about the teacher, what it means to find teachers or a teacher or a guru, because many people come to India, especially in the spiritual search for a agur, and then they get big disappointments, or they find a gure somewhere and then there’s been a lot of abuse also from part of some teachers. And you have to be very careful who you are going to trust from practice to.

[00:07:38] And the important thing is that you find your own inner gure, but it will manifest outside as different teaching, or different teachers. And sometimes you will have the connection with one or another. So we will talk this in detail, because I think it’s very important.

[00:07:58] And what happened about 'tween?. Interesting… Well , we’ll talk a little bit about consciousness, how is this seen in Buddhism, as this flow of eternal consciousness, without beginning, without end. But it’s always changing. So there’s not a substantial self in there yet. It has continuity, one moment of consciousness giving rise to the next moment of consciousness. And this creates a flow of experience. And so each person has an individual stream of consciousness that’s carrying all their karmic seeds, from one perspective. From our perspective it’s also an illusion. But in this relative reality, a twin has a individual stream of consciousness. So if we have twins, they might share some similarities in their bodies and their genetics, but their stream of consciousness is individual. Ultimately, these streams of consciousness are not totally individual and separate, but we’ll see how there’s different levels of consciousness and how when we operate from a dualistic mind, we perceive everybody as being very separated. When you achieve Shamatha, and going to the substrate is less realistic. And then if you go deeper into great power primordial consciousness, then that’s where the notions of you and I and all of that kind of doesn’t make sense anymore.

[00:09:35] But yeah, we might touch more about this topic, but the idea is not to get too philosophical because I can spend a lot of time studying and not bring it to to the experience. And that can be sometimes a waste of time. It’s good to understand how Buddhism explains these things and what is their view or their posture, but you have to start practicing and see for yourself.

[00:10:07] We’ll talk about that, too, because there is a path of studying first, learning all the concepts, all the list of mental factors and the 70s, the 51, the 6… They’re so intimately so things and it’s good to memorize them and know all these. Also, it’s very interesting to study Madhyamaka philosophy. I’ve done it for a few years. It’s very interesting and it gives you motivation to see the logic of it, and to see how we’ll analyze it. And maybe it does what you need. Maybe you need confidence. You need to understand it first rationally in order to say make sense, and then practice. But sometimes you just getting distracted. So you have to see if it’s really helpful. And there’s other paths which are encouraging you to go and start looking at your mind, and taking the mind as a path and just a little bit about how it works. But in the meantime, practice’s is the most important because we don’t know how long we’re going to be alive. And we have to make the best use of our time here.

[00:11:36] I think having a desire for others to be liberated before yourself is very altruistic, a very nice motivation. Actually, that’s what differentiates the different paths, and the different vehicles, is our motivation. So from the beginning, if you can cultivate the highest motivation of wanting the happiness of others before oneself, or wanting they will were to achieve enlightenment before oneself, that’s a very good motivation. But it’s actually difficult to really cultivate it generally. So that’s why we so-so practice to do is motivation and understand it, because their bodichitta practice is dissolving our ego and helping us also; go faster into Budhahood, because we want to be selfless, or recognize that there’s no self, and so it’s very, very helpful to have these motivation. And that’s why we are going to practices the four inmesurables as the fundation for the bodhichitta practices. And we’ll see how another traditions, they have a slightly different motivation, but they are all meaningful. So, yeah, it’s helpful, it is helpful to have that motivation. Actually from the beginning, when you practice Shamatha that’s what determines where you practice is going to take you. If you practice shamatha just because you want those aspects we were talking about: your want peace, you want clarity, you want pleasure, just want to feel good and less stressed and more calm, then that’s where you practice if you practice well. It might lead you, but that’s about it, right?. But if you have the motivation of practicing Shamatha so that you can apply that balance mind to continue and practicing vipassana, then that’s a more meaningful motivation. And if you have the motivation of practice vipassana to liberate yourself from suffering, then it’s a good motivation but is kind of a little bit limited; if you can have the motivation of not only liberating yourself or achieving Nibbana but to continue and becoming a bodhisattva and becoming enlightened and to do it for the benefit of others, then is a higher motivation. And that’s why these are different vehicles, right?. So the highest motivation you can have from the beginning is the best.

[00:14:23] And if we have inner Buddha nature why does Samsara exist?. Well, Samsara is not like a place, sometimes we think of it as a place, but it is actually a mode of perceiving reality. It’s a misconception. It’s an interpretation of reality to which we grasp… Out of ignorance and the moment there is no ignorance there, the moment you develop wisdom, then your perception of reality switches. And then, there’s no more samsara. That’s why they say samsara nirvana are one taste because it’s all in how you are perceiving things. How you understand reality. that’s why the vipassana practice cuts through the illusion of the appearances as being independent, permanent, substantial and seeing through, and seeing their emptiness. Then, wisdom of vipassana is what cuts the roots of ignorance, and we stop experiencing our own samsara. This life of recurrent dissatisfaction, problems, obstacles. Because all of these is coming out of ignorance and the poisons that arise from ignorance.

[00:15:43] So we’re going to see a little bit more of these when we talk about the four noble truths, the wonderful teaching of the Buddha. And so, there is this question because you can think why, why we are ignorant in the first place?, ¿why we grasp to things?, right? When you realize you’re a Buddha already or that you have Buddha nature, or the potential to become a Buddha, then you realize that was just an illusion that you were never an ignorant sentient being. So there’s different path and perspectives: one is a developmental path in which you are a miserable sentient being, striving to achieve enlightenment because you have so many of mental afflictions and you have to work very hard to get there, and achieve a lot of merit, and then accumulate a lot of merit and wisdom. But on the other hand, there is a path of discovery, where you start taking the veils of ignorance and you discovered that you’ve always been a Buddha… that this person you are manifesting is just an illusion. There is different ways of viewing it. The important thing is that you find the path that makes sense for you and the teaching that is right for you. There’s eighty four thousand teachings that the Buddha gave us. It’s just a way to say a lot. I don’t know if they’re really eighty four thousand, but yeah, it’s very interesting, there’s so many teachings, and they are all compatible. And then you can see that there’s compatibility between all the schools too, and the traditions. But you have to to see that there are talking about the same thing in different ways.

[00:17:36] And then you can also follow both like you can be in the discovery path and the developmental path at the same time. You can be practicing Dzogchen, the great perfection and recognizing your Buddha nature. But at the same time you are doing all the practices from the beginning: shamatha, and ngondro and tantric practices and all kinds of path, but always with a higher view.

[00:18:03] So we’re going to see a little bit about where the teachings come from and how they developed. But now it’s important that we stop practicing Shamatha right away, because we have the place, we have the space, we have the support, we have the community here. So this set very precious opportunity. You can always find a lot of answers in the books and there’s lots of teachings available on YouTube or anywhere in the Web. You can hear teachings from almost every teacher now, which is a very wonderful time, but it’s not very easy to get a condition for practice.

[00:18:46] Maybe the weather is not ideal for the practice. It might be a bit challenging to meditate in this weather, but if you cover yourself. Well, it’s good. It’s good. It’s a very good place. So we want to be practicing as much as possible. That’s why I want you to learn some set of practices right away: that we start this week with a lot of relaxation, with a lot of preparing our body and our mind. And then as we progress, we can make a more balanced diet of practices, integrating the four inmeasurables, the four applications of mindfulness, dream yoga, all these practices. But for the first part of the retreat, we keep Shamatha as our main practice. And then once we get to know all the all the practices, then we can switch uncertain more vipassana. And then, at the end we can discuss a little bit about these different paths, and where can you go and how can you learn them, and how to do it.

[00:19:56] So the cycle of time. there is some authentic teaching of Kalachakra this cycle of time. I recommend you reading the book of Vesna Wallace which translated all the Kalachakra tantra if you’re interested. Maybe I’ll tell you the prophecy of kalachakra.

[00:20:17] Well, I think that’s all the questions we have; for tonight go to bed and lay down in certain savasana in your bed, and tried to do these full body awareness before falling asleep, and see how it feel. Allowed yourself to be more towards the relaxation side. And if you start feeling slipping, then wake up too much. Just keep yourself slowly, letting yourself sleep, but with full more awareness. And then if you feel you’re about to fall asleep, just set your intention. You can say: “May I full sleep conscious and going to the dream state”. Or “may I be lucid as soon as I start dreaming”; “May I remember my dreams when I wake up”.

[00:21:12] There are two ways to go into lucid dream. Well, one is like you fall asleep and then you wake up in the dream and you recognize you’re dreaming. And one way of recognizing is recognizing your dream signs, which we will see later. And another ways is to do a Check state, which we also see how to do it. That’s like you wake up in the dream and then you notice something’s not quite something strange. And then just say, “am I dreaming!”. And then you realize you are dreaming, right?. And then the other way is, you consciously fall asleep without losing awareness. So you enter first into dreamless sleep, which is the substrate, every time you fall asleep, you enter into the substrate, same as when you achieve something, you’re going to the substrate. Your senses withdraw, you stop perceiving sounds and visual appearances and everything you withdraw into the substrate and then from there appear some manifest the dream. So if you fall asleep consciously, you enter into that dream-bliss state that is substrate, but you don’t have as much clarity as when you have shamatha. So it’s a big, if not so joyful and clear.

[00:22:37] So, but you enter into that space and then out of there you see the first stream coming out of that space manifesting around you. And if you’re in into lucid dream and you start practicing shamatha because you’re focusing kind of on an object, on the breath, or something in inward or awareness, you’re not engaging with the dream, then you go back into that dream state. So wherever you find a sit, there’s some of you who have also taken courses in Dream Yoga, or read books about the visualization of the syllables in the Chakras. So if you visualize in the throat chakra, like a red syllable “a” or a Padmasambhava, or a guru or a meditation deity in the throat, these will induce lucid dreaming. But if you put in on the heart chakra and you visualize it there that will induce lucid dreamlessly. It’s interesting to see what happens.

[00:23:42] So but there’s some very complicated, like the Tenzin Rinpoche book, which you have to wake up several times in the night, and visualize like syllabus and do a lot of things, and then keep waking up several times in the night. It is complicated to be doing that all night.

[00:24:03] But there is a book by Stephen Laberche, who he did some studies and research about lucid dreaming. Actually, he did kind of prove it, scientifically. Well, I’m going to tell you how.. he was in, I think, in Stanford or something. He’s a psychologist and he always had lucid dreaming since he was 10. So he wanted to do for his research something related with lucid dreams. And of course, everybody around him said, nah, not that’s just, it’s not scientific. You cannot probe it, change your topic. But he wanted to do it. So he devised an experiment. So, he put people well… first it was kind of accidental because he was putting a lot of people sleeping in his lap and measuring them and trying to find a way to prove it. But then, one day there was this guy that was sleeping… All these people, they they were very good for lucid dreaming. They have a natural predisposition. So this guy was slipping, and he noticed that his eyes were moving like: this side and then this side. But when you’re sleeping and dreaming, usually your eyes move like the REM, very fast. And it’s not something you can control. But this guy was having something very initial. So he woke up this guy and said, ¿were you were you lucid? Yes. ¿What were you dreaming?. I was watching a ping pong match.

[00:25:46] And so he realized that if you’re lucid your eye movement corresponds to your lucid state. So then he was able to tell all the skeptics that… he said: I’m going to send you a message from the dream world. And so, he went into sleep, and say: when I’m sleeping, I’m going to go into lucid dreaming and I’m going to move my eyes. something like three times to the right at one time to the left. And they could not believe it, because he actually did it. So, he said we can send messages from that.

[00:26:18] And so he wrote a book that is called Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. And it is very good because it gives you a lot of methods and they’re very good and very easy to do. So we’ll do some of those practices. He has the Lucidity Institute. So he has been doing this for all his life and he has very good methods. But that’s one, and one part of the practice is just to be lucid, and have fun and explore the world of dreams and see what you can do there, because you really can do everything you want. You can also create very bad karma if you do everything you want. It’s not as bad because there is no sentient being that is suffering. But you also are doing actions, of course it has karmic consequences.

[00:27:03] So most people that are not buddhist, they go into lucid dreaming to have fun and do all kinds of things, right?. But if you’re a practitioner, you want to go into dream yoga. And Dream Yoga is more a path of spiritual practice. And this describes since old times in Tibet, how to use that platform of reality that has very malleable rules, or no rules at all, to learn about emptiness and then help to import that knowledge into this waking state and kind of realize that this is also like a dream. So this are very, very nice practice.

[00:27:44] We can explore it a little bit here. So every night tried to just set the intention: “May I have lucid dreams”. “May I be, lucid my dream”… You can also have a little visualization and say, well, “As soon as I start dreaming and I notice I’m dreaming, I’m going to do this thing”. For example, I like to fly. I say “I’m going to fly”. But wherever you want to do, like you say, “As soon as I know I’m dreaming, I’m going to transform myself into a butterfly” or “I’m going to play with a walking on water or crossing through walls” or all kinds of things, just setting an intention. Because if you do every night, it’s not like big thing, like everybody can have lucid dream if they choose practice, it is not something you need to be a special person or anything. So you just have to… in the same way as just say: “I want to wake up at 5:00 a.m. because I have an interview or something”. And then you then put the alarm, but because you set the intension. Have you had that experience?. You said the intention very strongly, and then you wake up.

[00:28:54] So in the same way, you just have to say every night: "May be lucid and my dreams may recognize my dreams as dreams. Sometimes when you become lucid, you just don’t know what to do. And then, you just wake up. So if you have an idea of something you would like to do, that will be like a memory in your dream and give continuity, and then as soon you realize you are dreaming you start doing things in the dream. But then there’s some practices. One can do, but the first thing is to stabilize the dream.

[00:29:29] So it just said tension, fall asleep slowly with this full body awareness and then as you’re falling asleep slowly to set your intention and let yourself going to dream. When you wake up, try to remember… some of you have already started and dream journal and writing down. And that’s very good because you can find later in your dreams that there is something called “dream signs”, recurring things or persons, or places. Those are signs that you can use for the awaking practice, that we can see later.

[00:30:06] But for now, just try that and full body awareness… tomorrow try to do a lot of these practices we saw today and we will be incorporating some more to our menu, or daily menu. I think that’s it for today. Have a good sleep.

[00:30:26] And remember, when you wake up to do a little meditation session, you can also do this one for body awareness. As soon as you wake up, remain in your bed. Open your eyes. You can do it with the eyes open is good, and just remain there for as low as you can. Well, if you wake up like at 6:20, maybe you have to run to come here to meditate. Which is ironic.

[00:30:53] But if you wake up earlier or in the middle of the night, do a session. Thank you… Dedicate, dedicate your day, then we can continue practicing without the obstacle and we can have lucid dreams and continue practicing in our sleep and then we can have a good retreat with everybody here. Thank you.

Transcribed by: Miguel Angel de Anquin