As far as I know, this is her first time to visit under the top. She's the first... Tonight I would like to talk about Buddhism as a matter of the heart. We talk of Bodhicitta, which is frequently translated as awakened heart. And it is said that we all have that awakened heart.

[01:06]

In fact, I think it was Suzuki Roshi himself that said that when the Buddha attained enlightenment, he looked around and said how good it is to see that all people and all things have Buddha nature. So that when we see in an enlightened way or a fully awakened way, that's how we see it. How good it is to be part of all of this. How good it is that all of us and all people everywhere and all living things have Buddha nature or Bodhicitta. But then for the student the question is, how do we realize that?

[02:18]

Particularly how do we realize that every moment of our life? And in some sense really the question for the student is, how does the heart soften and open To praise the beautiful and resent the ugly causes a lot of confusion in this world. And I have found that in my own journey and talking with so many people, one of the main seeming obstacles for us as students is how to relate with the seeming ugliness that we find in ourselves and in our world.

[03:26]

How to open to that. In the Vajrayana we talk a lot about working with negativity, working with emotions. But it doesn't matter what tradition you belong to. In this world that is the big question that people ask. Particularly people once they have somehow seen things from a larger perspective and have some sense of the possibility, how vast is the possibility of being human and how rare it is to have a human birth. Having seen that, then even more you wonder how to relate with the seeming confusion, fear, depression,

[04:27]

sense of undesirable things that you see in yourself and you see seemingly outside of yourself. What I have been taught and what I have found to be true is that by opening wholeheartedly to all parts of oneself, by doing what in some sense really feels too dangerous and unthinkable to do, by completely opening to things in ourselves that we find frightening, that we find off, that we find unpleasant and disconcerting and embarrassing, by opening ourselves to those things that instead of going crazy, instead of becoming mean,

[05:36]

instead of harming others, what actually happens is that our heart softens. By seeing ourselves that clearly, that closely, that feeling, it's very painful, but it softens us. It softens us because we realize our kinship with all other people. You begin to realize that there is nothing that you see outside of yourself that you will not find in your own heart, in your own mind, in your own bones. So I think a lot of people here at Jensen know the poetry of Thich Nhat Hanh, and you know there's one where he says something like,

[06:37]

I am the girl being raped and I am the one raping her. I am the person being murdered and I am the one being killed. When you look into yourself, you see everything in there that you'll ever see on the outside, and instead of it making you depressed or resentful or angry, it softens you because you see your kinship with all living beings. There is a practice that we are given, we that are students of Trungpa Rinpoche,

[07:44]

we're given a practice at the time when we take the Bodhisattva vow, and this particular meditation practice is called Tonglen, T-O-N-G-L-E-N, and it means taking and sending. It has to do with being brave enough to face reality. It has to do with cultivating your heart, which is very much like cultivating your fearlessness. It has to do with cultivating your softness, which is very much the same thing as cultivating your bravery, developing or ripening or reconnecting, remembering the bravery that you always had,

[08:47]

which is another way of feeling this kinship with all other people and all living things. It's a practice where you purposely feel as wholeheartedly and as fully as you can your own pain. Actually, I'll describe the technique, but the notion is that you're willing to feel your own pain so completely that you can realize that it's feeling the pain of all sentient beings. And then, equally, the practice is one of letting go of that pain, of opening completely beyond pleasure and pain, opening, outward, relaxing,

[09:51]

ventilating all that sense of being caught in a small, dark, painful place. So Tonglen is about this kind of thing. And the story is that a man named Atisha went from India to Tibet a very long time ago. When Buddhism had been introduced to Tibet already, but it was at a very degenerate stage. And he went there to enliven and reawaken Buddhism in Tibet. And he had already been practicing this way himself for some time, so much so that he felt that the most valuable teaching in the world was the people he lived with and all the conflicts that that involved. He was said to say that the greatest teachings come from community,

[10:59]

because it's so difficult that it brings up everything you ever need to know. So Tibetans love to tell the story about how when he went to Tibet, he had heard that the Tibetans were such lovely, gentle, earthy people, that he decided to bring his Bengali tea boy with him, who was mean and nasty and never had a nice word to say. So he purposely brought this unruly fellow along with him to keep him awake and to make sure that he never got arrogant or thought that he was doing something. There was always going to be this thorn in his side. Tibetan teachers love to tell this story, because then the story goes on to say that when he arrived in Tibet, he realized he did not have squat. So this practice that he brought with him is very much like this story.

[12:05]

In other words, it's not just such a painful, grim matter. There's a lot of sense of vision that goes along with humor and a lot of openness that goes along with humor. So some sense in this practice of willing to feel painfully and also willing to have a sense of humor or some sense of lightness, which is another way of saying having a larger perspective or going beyond your limited assumptions about anything. So the technique is like this. The technique begins with simply opening. The beginning of the technique is somewhat like just sitting and letting your mind open. In some sense it's like Zazen or the sitting meditation

[13:10]

that people do in other Buddhist traditions. Just sitting and letting your mind open to what is. This is how the practice begins, and this is the ground of the whole practice. The whole ground of this practice is what is traditionally called absolute bodhicitta. That's to say the ground of the practice is absolute realization of things as they are, a sense of openness beyond any kind of narrow perspective. So one, at the beginning of the practice, depending on what their realization of openness is, one just simply connects with that, because this is the background of the whole thing to which he continually returns. For some people this is simply remembering something that makes their heart open,

[14:13]

some sense of gesture of kindness. For other people it's remembering the ocean or the sky. Many people have had some experience in their meditation or have some sense of being able to easily remember the sense of openness. But at any rate, the practice begins with the sense of simply opening to a larger perspective, which traditionally is called opening to absolute bodhicitta. Then the rest of the practice has to do with awakening the heart. What's actually said is it's a practice of cultivating relative bodhicitta, which is to say that since we have awakened the heart already, since the awakened state is always here,

[15:16]

we can connect with it at any time. And in this case we do that by recognizing how we suffer and how we can let go of suffering. So to begin with, having let your mind open, then there is a stage in this practice where you breathe in, and you breathe in dark, heavy, and hot. You actually visualize that you're breathing in black, heavy, and hot through all the pores of your body. And then when you breathe out, you radiate out, some sense of radiating out white, light, and cool. Right away you breathe in again, visualizing that you're breathing in black, hot, and heavy.

[16:19]

Then you breathe out, radiate out white, light, and cool. In some sense, this is simply a metaphor for being able to feel on the in-breath the stuckness of pain, the hotness of pain, the sort of heavy and dark quality of pain, which is to say that you're actually connecting in this first part visually with the sense of grasping what it feels like when you get angry. When you get angry, your world gets very small, and it feels dark, and it feels hot, and perhaps it also feels heavy. Basically it's as if this large, vivid, brilliant world that we live in

[17:25]

is suddenly just very small and tiny and self-centered, and it feels very black and heavy and hot, and you can feel it in your body. When you breathe out, that's again another way of visualizing, somewhat metaphorically, the feeling of unconditional openness. What it feels like, any experience you've ever had in your life, what does it feel like when you let go of preconceptions and just open beyond pleasure and pain? Some sense of seeing things as they are. Have a sense of vastness, a sense of lightness, a sense of coolness perhaps. So on the in-breath you breathe in black, heavy, and hot, on the out-breath you breathe out, radiate out, white, light, and cool.

[18:26]

And the sense here is that you're willing to feel the pain on the in-breath, and you're willing to open everything out and share the sense of openness on the out-breath. Now this practice is a very helpful one for all of us, because of the fact that no matter how much meditation we've done, sometimes there's still a very subtle wanting things to be comfortable and wanting to avoid pain, and somehow this practice nails us on that point. So having flashed or opened at the beginning, having visualized black, heavy, and hot on the in-breath, and white, light, and cool on the out-breath, you do that until it's synchronized on your breath. In-breath, hot, out-breath, white, light, and cool. Then we come actually to the heart of the practice,

[19:29]

which is the cultivation of loving-kindness towards yourself. At this point what you do is you purposely, without conceptualizing it, you purposely evoke anything painful in your life, anything unresolved and painful in your life. And you do not have to name it. In fact, it's best to be able to do it very simply and straightforwardly by perhaps just thinking of the face of a person, or just, without too much elaboration, thinking of a situation that causes that sense of stuckness to arise in your heart and in your gut, a sense of black, heavy, and hot. So on the in-breath, having touched into that situation, on the in-breath, you own it fully and completely

[20:31]

and feel it wholeheartedly. On the out-breath, there's a sense of ventilating all of that, letting it go. In our lives, we tend to either be fixated on holding on to things, or somehow attached to space, attached to the sense of what we might feel is enlightenment, what we might feel is deep experience, what we might feel is pleasure or comfort, in a spiritual sense or in an everyday sense. And this practice tends to undercut both those things, because on the in-breath, you feel the pain completely and as fully as you can, just a sense of feeling it. On the out-breath, equally, you are willing to just let go and open.

[21:31]

And the sense of the out-breath is with the out-breath, just relax out and ventilate the whole thing. It's like as if you were putting space around the whole thing, around a lot of space. If you can do this and connect with this as something that's real, and not just something that's theoretical, then the next step will be very meaningful to us all. Because then the next step and the final step is that when you breathe in, whatever pain it is that you're feeling, you recognize that all people everywhere are feeling that. And that all people everywhere get stuck in that very same way.

[22:37]

And that all people everywhere spin off into tremendous confusion, just because they feel this kind of feeling. So when you breathe in at the last stage of the tunnel, and when you breathe in, you breathe in not just connecting with your own pain, but you breathe in so that you feel it so that all other beings can be free of it. You're willing to feel it so that all other beings can be free of it. Sometimes it's expressed that when you breathe in, when you breathe in, it's as if you're taking it away from all other people, breathing in all the pain of all certain things, and feeling it so fully in yourself. Then on the out-breath, you breathe out and you send out,

[23:41]

radiate out the sense of relief, the sense of relaxation, the sense of ventilating the whole thing, the sense of some sense of connecting again with this openness that you perhaps were able to connect with at the very beginning of the practice. And you share that with all sentient beings, whoever have lived, who are living now, and whoever will live in the future. So in this way, the very things that are usually like our most painful things that we wish we could get rid of, that we would like to have gone, that we consider obstacles to our practice, that we consider a pain in the neck to our lives, these very things, instead of being obstacles, instead of being intruders, instead of wrecking the whole thing and ruining our whole lives, instead of that, they become the very means by which

[24:45]

you recognize your kinship with all other human beings. I think it's safe to say that if you do not begin by making friends with the negativity, confusion, fear, depression, resentment, and all those kind of things in yourself, you will not be able to have genuine heartfelt compassion for other people who are feeling those things. When Rinpoche first taught me this technique, he told me a story that I'd like to share with you. He said, this is a practice of awakening the heart, and it's a practice of awakening your heart first of all to yourself, coming to be able to be unconditionally loving towards all parts of oneself,

[25:49]

which begins by just being able to feel it fully in your heart, and then being able to let go of it and open it up. And he said, when he was little and his teacher taught him his practice, he had difficulty doing it. And then he said one day, when he was only around eight years old, he looked out of his window of his quarters, and down below in the courtyard, there were a group of boys who were stoning the puppies. And the puppy was dying, the puppy was whimpering, and the boys were jeering and laughing. And then he said, after that, all he had to ever do was take a bath, and he could always do his practice. So it's like bringing up whatever is painful, and often it's very helpful to do it with things that are just unresolved in your mind,

[26:52]

but you can also do it with memories like that. Rather than those memories then causing you to be outraged, causing you to be resentful and bitter and wanting some... and building up some sense of enmity, you just simply recognize that human beings... human beings do all kinds of things. Why? They do it because some feeling that feels bad arises in them, and then they strike out in all kinds of cruel and mindless ways. Why? Just simply to try to get rid of this feeling in their heart. So you can take those very feelings that come up in your heart, and instead of blaming them on anyone, you can breathe them in, feel them fully in your heart, and on the outbreath, let it go. Create as much space as you can for them to exist in larger space,

[27:56]

some sense of ventilating of all things on the outbreath. And first you do it with things that are personal to you, and then having contacted the realness of pain, of human pain, then you just take the next step of realizing that when you're breathing, you can be breathing in the pain of all things everywhere, and sending out a sense of relaxation. So, I'd like to do that. And when we've done it, then I'd like to open it up for questions. If you don't find it too intrusive, I will read this gently,

[28:56]

by just... it actually has four stages. The first is the opening, the second is the visualization of the two qualities of experience, the black on the inbreath and the white on the outbreath. The third is connecting with your own personal feelings of pain, suffering, whatever that might be, your anger, your resentment, your fear, whatever it might be. And the fourth step is extending that out to all human beings. So, rather than you having to kind of remember all that, I would simply say each stage, and you can continue to do the stage until I say to move on. However, at the end, I'll just say now, just do the practice as you like. Which is to say that you can always return again to the personal thing

[29:59]

at any time, to make it more real. What Rinpoche actually told me was that, he said, if you just do the practice of cultivating Maitri, or loving-kindness for yourself, if you just work with these feelings of feeling fully and letting go for yourself, it's too small. It's too, you just get, it doesn't undercut any kind of any ego-clean. Ultimately, it's too, you get too caught up in your own personal situation. However, he said, if you just always do everything for all sentient beings, it's never very real. It's like someone said, it's all very well to try to save all sentient beings, but I have a lot of trouble with my husband. So, this practice had to do with using the feelings that you might have, unresolved feelings you might have about your husband, your wife,

[31:02]

your lover, your child, your father, your mother, your boss, your teacher, whoever, whatever it might be. Working with those unresolved feelings, so that the universal thing is real, and so that the real personal thing is universal. So in this practice we bring together the absolute and the relative. And this is the practice that Atisha brought to that, to tame the untameable being. So, when I hit the gong, if you would first just, in whatever way is possible for you, just simply let your mind open and relax. And for people that have never done any meditation,

[32:04]

or have only done a bit of meditation, or feel that they don't really know what it means to let your mind open and relax, just remember it's something that's pleasant, something that has a sense of openness to it. For instance, the ocean, or the sky, or a sense of goodness that you've experienced. GONG

[33:07]

Black, heavy and hot coming into all the pores of your body. Breathe out, radiating out white light and cold. Breathe in and breathe out, making the breath of equal length. And in this case it's fine to exaggerate the in-breath, and exaggerate the out-breath if you find that helpful. But be sure to make the in-breath and the out-breath equal. Breathe in black, heavy and hot.

[34:25]

Breathe out white light and cold. GONG GONG

[35:55]

GONG Do this until you feel synchronized in your breath. Black, heavy and warm out. GONG [...]

[37:07]

GONG Again, think of the face or the situation that brings up unresolved painful feelings in you. And breathe in, feel that fully, and own it completely. What does it feel like? In the out-breath, a sense of relief, of relaxation, of opening out, ventilating the whole thing. Then right again, breathe in, and you can feel it pulling. What does that feel like? Feel it completely and fully. And then open out, you know, that sense of relaxing, opening out, ventilating the whole thing. Try to remember or bring up something that is very real to you. Something that is unresolved and painful in your life.

[38:55]

And then be brave enough to feel it fully, and brave enough to let go of it completely. Feel it fully and let go of it completely. And if it changes into another thing, that's fine. Just keep working with the feeling and letting go of the out-breath. www.mooji.org

[41:20]

www.mooji.org And realizing that whatever it is you're feeling, that all beings suffer in this way, then breathe in for all sentient beings, for yourself, all others in this world, all the people that you know, all the people in the world. Breathe in for everyone. You'll be willing to feel it completely so that others can be free of it. On the out-breath, send out the sense of revelation, of relaxation and openness, sense of spaciousness, so that all beings who suffer could have a sense of openness and space, some sense of being able to let go of the tightness and fixated quality of suffering. Then feel it again for all beings on the in-breath,

[42:39]

a sense of opening, letting go on the out-breath, for yourself and all others. And continue in this way, doing it for yourself and for others. www.mooji.org

[43:42]

www.mooji.org www.mooji.org Satsang with Mooji

[45:09]

www.mooji.org www.mooji.org www.mooji.org

[46:10]

www.mooji.org So, you know, it's said that the wise person, www.mooji.org www.mooji.org the ones that are worthy of veneration, www.mooji.org they feel confusion the same way we do, www.mooji.org but they aren't confused by it. www.mooji.org And they feel fear, www.mooji.org but they're not afraid of that fear. www.mooji.org www.mooji.org So, somehow, the reason I wanted to present this tonight www.mooji.org is because I actually, to do the practice, www.mooji.org it's actually quite important that you already have a sitting practice of meditation www.mooji.org and, in fact, if you've sat for quite a while, that's best.

[47:18]

But I know a lot of people here tonight have sat, a lot, www.mooji.org and I wanted to bring it up so that then we could have some kind of discussion here tonight, www.mooji.org which included the sort of realness of the things that sort of plague us www.mooji.org in our practice and in our lives, www.mooji.org and that we could talk about those kind of things, not in an abstract way, www.mooji.org or not in a sense, with a sense of grudge or resentment about these things, www.mooji.org but rather as something that is of enormous benefit on our journey. If at this point we could have questions, and if anybody wanted to leave at this point, www.mooji.org

[48:21]

I would welcome that, www.mooji.org but otherwise, for the rest of the day, www.mooji.org we could have some questions, www.mooji.org you could express your doubts. www.mooji.org she tended to get stuck on the in-breath, the dark part, and wasn't able as easily to let go.

[49:38]

So, there's sort of two things that people have trouble with, with the practice, and one is that, and another is that even though all day long they may have been walking around full of conflicted emotions, they sit down and suddenly can't think of anything, can't get in touch with anything, because they're numb. For that reason, actually, it's a very, it's actually a good practice to remember in post-meditation, you know, just when actually things come up, then there's a slogan, Be Grateful to Everyone, because there's a sense of just the person that is a trigger for you, triggers off your conflicted emotions, you could just reflect on this practice and take this particular attitude. But in terms of the getting stuck in the pain, if that happens, it's good to return to just the black and the white,

[50:53]

back to the abstract and just the sense of it metaphorically, because you can still connect with it in that way, and it's easier to do it with colors or qualities than perhaps if you have something that is very frightening or difficult to let go of. But the key thing is that you breathe in an equal breath to what you breathe out, and that you don't just breathe in and hold it and hold it and hold it and then a little out-breath, and then a big in-breath, or the other way around either, that it's equal in and out, and you can go back to just the black and the white. Is this something that you do instead of just breathing? Instead of... Trying to take the verbatim of now, or whatever, do you always meditate in this way?

[51:56]

No. What is your meditation practice? Just breathing. Like, here at Zen Center? No, I was in Boulder for a while. I see. No, this is... the main practice always is just the straightforward, just sitting, using the breath or whatever meditation technique one uses. But the basic practices and the ground of the whole thing is always just the basic meditation practice. Formless practice, that when thoughts arise, you let them go. And this practice is only done in addition to that. For instance, if you were sitting for an hour, you might do it for ten minutes of the hour. If you were sitting for three hours, you might do it for twenty minutes of the three hours.

[52:58]

If you wanted to. And it's to introduce the idea of purposely opening your heart or ripening, awakening bodhicitta. And it's a practice of waking up a sense of loving kindness for yourself and for others. My treatment of compassion. And in fact, any of you that were here tonight who have never meditated before, I'm sure it was very hard to do this, I would imagine. Because it takes a certain amount of stability of mind even to keep your attention on in and out. But once one has somehow stabilized mind or ability to do that, I also find that people who work in the healing professions can do this practice very easily, even if they've never had any meditation experience. Because it's so real for them what it's like to work with people that are suffering. And they feel so greatly the need to be able to work with the feelings that that evokes in them.

[54:06]

And that they can do it quite easily too. But there needs to be some kind of ground to do the practice. And then it's simple. Inhibition. It's like adds a little color. A little energy principle. A little sort of turns things up a little bit. Just when you thought you'd achieved... Then let's add a little Tabasco sauce and turn it up a little bit. So it's like your mother-in-law, isn't it? Right after sashimi. I find that when I do it, that just one in-breath and one out-breath I feel very pressured. Sometimes I have a lot of time to get to know the instrument.

[55:09]

And I have a lot of time to look at those things. And sometimes the pressure will keep up even if I'm doing it exactly the same. Well, I've always been curious about that because sometimes it does get quite intense that way. But definitely the instruction is just one... It can be a very deep in-breath. And it can be a very long out-breath. But I think the notion is that in our lives, in order to live fully, and in order to make peace with ourselves and our world, it's necessary to be able to let things touch you fully for just a moment and be able to let go completely. But then to be able to have something be felt completely right again and to let go. So that one doesn't become attached either to spaciousness or to pain. So that one time I was given the instruction.

[56:16]

I went and I said that I was... that I had harmed someone and I felt very bad about it. And I really had harmed someone and I was right to feel really bad about it. But the problem was I had harmed them about two weeks ago and I was still feeling very bad about it. So I went to my teacher and I asked about this. And he said, only two minutes for regret. So I always remembered that. He didn't say, you know, don't indulge and don't feel these things. There was a sense that you could feel the regret completely and fully in your heart and then just let it go. So this practice is about that. In fact, all practice is about that. That's what practice is about, walking together. This practice is just a little bit more, gets into the relative truth of things.

[57:18]

And makes the slogans that go along with this, things like, be grateful to everyone, and things like that. In Gurdjieff, for instance, there's a story which you may have long heard, but I like it so much. He had this dreadful man in his community. And this dreadful man was continually mean and sour. And nobody liked him, even the nicest, most gentle, loving people. They couldn't like him because he was so mean and desirable and nasty. And so they kept asking Gurdjieff if they could please get rid of this person. And finally he said, sure, we can get rid of him, but then we'll just have to get somebody else to like him. So we find in our lives that there are these things like this

[58:27]

that you actually can't get rid of. And for people that practice and want to wake up, you're really asking for these people to entertain your life. So that we sometimes describe it as like a dog that bites on your arm and you just can't get rid of it. It's some kind of painful issue in your life that you can't shake. Either because it's an intimate relationship that isn't going to just go away, or perhaps it's because of great loss. Someone has died, or perhaps you find that you have cancer, or something like that. This kind of thing that isn't just going to go away through your good practice, but in some sense that you need to see the root of pain and suffering altogether and be able to feel that completely and ventilate it. So that through relative things, through our actual emotions,

[59:28]

that's the way we can discover the emptiness of things. But then there's a sense of having discovered the emptiness of things, there's still the challenge and the realness of things. And those two things at one point realize are inseparable. Well, this is something about dealing with fear. I find it really gratifying to keep practicing in your own way, because I feel completely gratified. It's really enjoying what things are like. Is this an appropriate way to deal with that kind of fear? This is an excellent way to deal with fear. Now, fear is somehow a companion of the serious seeker. I suppose it's a companion of everyone, you might say,

[60:34]

but definitely if you think that the spiritual life is going to rid you of fear, you'll be mistaken. Fear is inevitable if you're really alive. And if you really want to know, then it's going to be accompanied by fear. So really the path is not one of overcoming fear, but it's of not making such a big deal about fear. So when you feel fear, breathe it in and get in touch with what it feels like. Become very intimate with it, and then train in letting go. Two minutes for the realness of fear, letting go, then fear again and letting go. So in that way, fear actually becomes motivation. It spurs you on to want to know. In some sense, curiously, ironically, it spurs you on to want to know how to get rid of fear.

[61:39]

But in the process, you learn a lot more than that. So not to be afraid of fear, but actually realize that it's a great teacher, and that it is inevitable if you really want to understand how things are. Christians, you know, talk about dark night of the soul. And that's not just something that happens once. What is dark night of the soul? What is dark night of the soul? Well, this term comes from St. John of the Cross. But basically it means that you have had the illusion that there was something to hold on to,

[62:44]

and you find that there's nothing to hold on to, and you go through a period of enormous fear and empty heartedness, that nothing can fill. You can't go to a movie to forget about it. You can't practice meditation to forget about it. You can't do anything to get away from it. And it seems to be, from the perspective of Buddhist meditation, it seems to be the seeing truth, seeing the true nature of reality, that you can still have the viewpoint of holding on and not wanting to let go. But the essence of it is that you can't hold on anymore, but it still scares you a lot. So, they say, if you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.

[63:49]

They say, don't hold on to anything. However, when you first experience that, you wish you weren't. When you do this practice, do you recommend doing it with your eyes shut or your eyes open? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You can do it either way. With the eyes closed, it's easier to be one-pointed, but sometimes, opening is helpful as well. Do you recommend doing it for the entire practice, or a certain stage of practice, when you feel the need? Well, when we take Bodhisattva vow, then we are instructed to do it,

[64:53]

as I say, for like 10 minutes of an hour sitting, 20 minutes of a three-hour sitting, something like that. So you could do it like that, or you could just do it when you find yourself trying to push away things, or getting resentful and justifying that. When your emotions begin to get really solid, that's an excellent time to do this. And actually, to do this properly, you would sit, always need to sit first, and just sit. Then having sat for at least 10 minutes, the longer would be better. Then you would do this, because then you would have much more access to openness. Then, you ruin your good practice by thinking of this person, or this situation that's been bothering you.

[65:55]

I think you could do an hour of it. You could. You could, but... You could, yes. Then you should sit for half an hour, at least, before and after. Is it important to do it every day? Is it important to do it every day? We are instructed to do it every day. However, we usually don't. Yes. You use it when you feel you need it. Yes. To be very honest, I forget all about it for long periods of time, and then I remember it when I find myself getting really stuck. Or, spontaneously, I might remember it, just out of nowhere.

[67:03]

During practice periods, it's incorporated into the practice period. Then you do it every day. Do people do it as a group, or individually? And also, do people have to get very emotional behind it? Do people do it as a group, or individually, and do people get emotional behind it? You can do it as a group, for instance, if you were having a practice period, and we do it as a group. You can do it individually, anytime and anywhere. Yes, people get very emotional behind it. In fact, in working with it, it's very challenging, because there's this one thing, as I say, which is that you can't feel anything, and then there's this other thing, that you get caught, like your question, you get caught in the emotionality. So, just like any practice, you do your best. If you found that you were getting caught in the in-breath quality,

[68:09]

and couldn't ventilate it, it's best then to just end the time line, and go back to sitting practice, and work with emotions and stuff, in the usual way. Because definitely, you don't want to have a practice of creating fixation and grasping. But, you see, what was so valuable to me, personally, about this practice, when it was first introduced to me, is I realized that there was quite a lot of hypocrisy in my sitting practice. Which was to say, that subtly, in ways that I had not realized, I was using my sitting practice to cool everything out. And then, when I was actually asked to contact, to turn things up in this way, not only that, but to actually take on other people's neurosis, that really sort of put my soul where I was really at, in terms of my sitting practice.

[69:10]

So it was so valuable, in terms of how I meditated after that, and also how I lived after that. Because it somewhat shows you where you're at, in terms of how much, really, are you able to love yourself, and how much, really, are you able to have heartfelt compassion for other people. And this practice shows you where you're at. And then, you're not expected to just be a bodhisattva, which is to say, you're not just expected to sit down and wham, you have overwhelming mightiness and compassion. But doing this practice actually awakens your heart. If you can do this practice, you will find that mightiness and compassion naturally are awakened and evolve. And that's actually the sort of magic of the practice. Most everyone starts with very little mightiness and probably no compassion. However, it is important to have the aspiration.

[70:16]

And that's why it's given people, after they've taken the bodhisattva vow, they aspire to want to give up their own privacy and put others first. Because they find that's hard to do. And this practice is a way of cultivating the actual ability to be able to do that, rather than just wishful thinking. Wishful thinking alternating with self-denigration. If you just say to yourself, I am going to be loving and I am going to be compassionate, that's like planning your next failure. However, if you sit down with just the intention to do this practice as best you can, no matter how well or how... I didn't know why he used those kind of words. Let's just say,

[71:18]

whatever your experience of the practice is, it will be awakened in your heart. We have two more questions. Is there a recommendation for being in a relationship? I mean, say it's just, you know, just taking a contract, or a contract, or a contract, that's the outcome. So in the in-breath, there's a sense of feeling it. You'll find if, say, someone does something that hurts you, and so much goes on, you feel betrayed, or whatever. Let's just say, with this practice you begin to acknowledge more and more

[72:25]

that there are infinite triggers that will trigger off your unresolved chronic pain. So the point is to begin to feel those. There's a famous story which probably a lot of you have heard, which is that if the archer shoots an arrow into your heart, best to pay attention to the arrow in your heart instead of yelling at the archer. So, in the same way, that's what this practice is about, it's paying attention to the arrow in your heart. So someone has triggered it off, and really, as all of you who meditate will know, your discursive minds are wild with blaming them, and then if you've been taught that that's not right, then maybe the next day you're guilt about blaming them. Nevertheless, there's a lot of stuff that goes on in discursive minds. And the notion here is to, instead of all of that,

[73:27]

just feel what it feels like, and just realize something has been triggered, something has triggered this stuff in you, and here's your opportunity to feel it completely, and then let it go, ventilate it on the out-breath. Actually, that's all I've been saying, is to just breathe out, there's a lot of sense of radiating outward, ventilating outward, opening up, whatever helps you to sort of work with letting go. And another image is like, it's like you have this large sore on your chin, and it really hurts, but then you go and you sit on the rim of the Grand Canyon, so the sore is really there, but, you know, there's so much space and openness there,

[74:28]

that somehow the sore on your chin is a lot different than when you're sitting in a dark room, you're all sore, and suddenly there's a whole other perspective. Or it's like having that fight with somebody in your house, and then going up on a mountain, looking down at that house, look at that little house, and then the fact that stuff goes on in that house seems to sort of fall away, and you have a sense of what's going on. So the out-breath is some sense of wider perspective, ventilating the whole thing. It's something that people, it's an insight that people have through their practice, and then the in-breath is feeling, and then the out-breath is letting. I'd like to ask two questions about the technique. The first one is,

[75:29]

did you give yourself time to last the phase after you couldn't sit any longer, or is it something that's really fast? It's somewhat fast. The reason it's fast is because that sense of openness, if you just can flash it, if there's some sense of just opening, then you want to just experience that before you start making something out of it. So there's some sense of just opening, and then quickly, fairly quickly, and really at your own speed, but then starting to work with the in-breath and the out-breath. The second one is, do you work every time with only one concrete emotion you have, or do you try to change? Let's say you are working with anger, and you space out,

[76:31]

and then another emotion, even a different one, and you use a different one, can you change? In some sense. So unlike sitting practice, you actually use mental objects and emotional feelings as the object of the meditation.

[77:12]

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