<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1REN35SZOgJ2iARs_fSIB50O2uZFqNuNE/preview" width="100%" height="80" allow="autoplay"></iframe> the everlastingness in everything that's passing. We become that everlastingness through everything that's passing. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare. Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare Krishna, Hare Krish Hare Hare Hare Ramm Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare Hare Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna Krishna, Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Hare Hare. Hare Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. Hare Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Hare. Radisam! Govinda Hare Govinda Hare E Prabhu Dina Dayala Hare Go Vindah Hare Go Falah Hare E prabhu nila dayala hare Govinda hare Govada hare Satsang with Mooji Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sing a poem. Govinda Hare, Govada Hare May Prabhu Deena Dayana Hare Govinda Hare, Govada Hare E prahudinah dayalare Thank you. ... I just wanted to mention one quick thing. There's an odd sort of peer pressure starting to happen here because we brought a bunch of people from Diamond Mountain University who are our tantric students here. So there's a lot of, like, frustrating and, you know, stuff to us, which is proper for our tantric students. but I don't want people who are not our tantric students to feel obligated in any way to do any kind of prostrating to us. It's not something that we ask for. It's just something that we have a certain relationship with some of the people in this room. And, you know, they like to do stuff like that, but I don't want everybody to feel like this is a room where every time you get in, you have to bow to us or something. It's not an obligation when you come to this class. Então, só fiel free, como você come in, você já se senta. Se você tem pessoas postando, e aí é tudo bem. Então, ok? Sim, sim, sim. Sim. Sim. Sim! We'll do a little prayer. If you don't know it, you'll do what I did in the monastery for 20 years. Satsang with Mooji Be-sunam We're going to start with some of the verses that we didn't finish last night. So the first one will be verse 4, which is on page 5 again. And I think maybe we'll just keep reading until we catch up. So we don't go so many. The unruly wind will never come to the middle as long as the turbulent impurities jam the channels. How could one then ever reach the state beyond the mind? How could we ever come to the spiritual goal we see? The big word here is Madhyaga. Say Madhyaga. Madhyaga. Madhyaga means middle, like Madhyamika philosophy is middleweight philosophy. Madhyaga came into English as medium and middle. And Gha means to go or to come. So Madhya Gha means to come into the middle. And this is the idea that as you progress in your yoga practice, as your asanas get better, as your pranayama gets better, as your attitude gets better, then these winds, the unruly winds, which in Sanskrit is marutta. and it means very, very powerful like cyclone, tornado, wind. And then the goal is to try to move them into the central channel. When prana comes into the Sushumna, called in Sanskrit, Uma in Tibetan, and I think that's why Professor Thurman called his daughter that. It's a beautiful name. So Uma means the middle channel or the central channel. And so to bring the winds into the Uma or the Sushumna is the goal. And as you do more yoga, as you do more asanas, as you learn pranayama, as you learn wisdom and a proper worldview of reality, the winds naturally begin to move into the central channel, more along the spine. And then you get a sense of contentment a sense of happiness, a sense of wisdom, you're more kind, you're more compassionate, you feel relaxed, you feel happy. These are signs that the winds are moving into the central channel. The world starts to be brighter and brighter. And that's called Madhya Gah. So the purpose of all the practices we're doing is to move winds into the middle and to have these results. In extreme cases, as the winds move into the middle, the body actually transforms into light. It no longer flesh or blood. So the whole name of the game is get them into the middle, Madhika. It says here, then you can reach Unmani. Say Unmani. Manas means, in Tibetan, Yī means the mind. And Unmani means out of your mind. in Russian the word for crazy is suma suma shachi shachi means gone sa means out uma means mine suma shachi means unmani it's the same it means gone out of the mine what it means here is to see that things are empty it's a high state of realization where you see that things are empty what's a very simple definition of emptiness. I am not not coming from you. I am not not coming from you. In Buddhism we say dependent urination. What's dependent urination? I am coming from you. What's emptiness? I am not anything else than that. And that's emptiness. It's not thinking about something black. It's not trying to empty thoughts out of your mind. It's not staring at the wall. It's not thinking that life doesn't matter or there's no good deeds or bad deeds, which is the worst kind of wrong idea about emptiness. It just means, I am not, not coming from you. All things are coming from you. Point to one thing in this room, or point to one bad thing that happened to you this week, that didn't come from how you're treating other people. And that's all. We say un-pointable. It's called un-pointable sometimes. You can't. There's nothing. If you can't point to anything that's not coming from you, then you can't point to anyone who's hurting you or causing you problems. You can't blame anyone. Except maybe yourself. So that's un-mani. A deep state of un-mani, a direct perception of emptiness happens when a lot of wind moves into the central channel. If you can get to that stage in this life due to your practice of asanas and pranayama and meditation, then definitely you will get enlightened within seven lifetimes, something like that. Which is not so bad considering you've been at it for several billions, countless lifetimes. So it's a very, very, very important stage that we hope to reach. Un mani. Semling depa in the Tibetan, beyond the mind. Beyond the conscious mind. If we can move the winds into the central channel. Control the tornado winds. Maruta. Reading one. page 6. Sridhomet When all the channels and chakras have been cleared of the impurities which crowd them, then the yogi has attained mastery at bringing the winds within. So pranayama is about cleaning our nadis, our channels of these impurities. What are the impurities that Yogi Suat Marama is talking about in this verse? We could say the impurities which lie within the two side channels, which we'll talk about more today, our ignorant disliking of things and our ignorant liking, and then ignorance itself, which causes every single one of our problems. These take the form of physical substances in our body. there are three kinds of things that run through our channels. There's wind, and then there's something called the red element, jangsem marble, and then there's something called the white element, or jangsem karpo in Tibetan. And those are the purified forms of the elements. And those are the ones that run, if at all, Those are the ones that are found inside the center of your heart, and they're responsible. They are the foundation of our consciousness, this combination of red and white elements in the heart, in something called the indestructible drop. And it's in the middle of the central channel, inside the heart. And it's the foundation of all who we are in this lifetime. The red element comes from the mother and the white element comes from the father. And there's a seed of it inside our heart. And then from there, as we are formed in the womb, these red and white elements spread to all the different parts of our body. As our chakras form, so these elements multiply. They reproduce themselves. And they spread to every single part of our body. But as they spread, it's like they get polluted or something like that because they are combined with a mind that is ignorant. And so they produce ignorant liking and ignorant disliking, you know, these kind of elements. And then they're more likely to be referred to as something like phlegm and bile and wind. You know, because these are the doshas, these are the impurities that crowd the body. And so all inside our channels, along with mistaken winds, which run throughout all of our side channels, not just the two side channels, but there are tons of branches. 72,000, actually. So along with this wind is these impure substances that are running in our channels. In Tibet, they call it the enigma or the dross that runs inside the channels. And it makes us misperceive our world. These are the kind of things that make us misperceive our world. it makes us not understand what Geshe was just talking about, that every single thing that we ever see is coming from us. We were just having dinner in a restaurant today, and I was trying to come up with a good example for misperceiving my world, and there's this waiter. It was almost surreal. Every single thing we asked for, he would bring us something different. And I was just like, do you understand English? I mean, it was just like amazingly, I don't know how to say. Because after you start to understand emptiness a little bit, it gets embarrassing to tell people bad things that happen to you. Because you're, you know, it's like if I say something bad about this guy, it only reflects on me, right? So if I say this guy was grossly incompetent, I'm like, okay, obviously, you know, at some point, I was grossly incompetent in the past, and I just couldn't believe it, you know, but it's so easy to think that the guy is just kind of stupid from his own side, you know, like, that he's out there, and he has nothing to do with me, you know, I didn't cause him, And he just, like, brought us the wrong thing every single time. And he brought extra stuff, too, that we didn't even order. I was like... I won't tell you who he was or where we were, but, you know. You know, it's all a reflection of me, right? If I tell a room full of people that I saw someone today who was grossly incompetent, I should be embarrassed because at some point in the past, I was grossly incompetent. And it's just a reflection of my own mind. But due to these things in our channels, due to this dross in our channels, due to these knots, which are our chakras, right? These evil little knots that choke our wisdom. Our wisdom lies in the center channel, right? So these evil little knots that are choking our wisdom, and knots all throughout our body, and then this nigma, this dross that gets stuck in the channels, and produces more knots. It's not just tides, but it's like these elements are caked there so that nothing else can run. Yeah, it's gross. People are like, eww. And they're like stuck in there. And that's all due to these misperceptions, and then they cause misperceptions. So it's like this vicious cycle. It's due to our misperceptions that we have them, and then they cause more misperceptions, which reinforced them. So what do we do? We work qinong tabla sorbe. We work from the inside and the outside at the same time. We work on the pranayama practices because there are certain pranayama practices that are used to burn away the pneuma or the dross inside all of our channels of the body. And you need to learn how to do that. You need to learn those methods of burning away the dross and the channels just by breathing. There's so much power in the breath. There's so much power in these practices once you are properly trained. But if you just stick with the breathing, you know, you could try pranayama all you want. and hold your breath until you turn blue in the face and your misperceptions are not going to go away unless you also fight them from the inside, which is trying to understand emptiness at the same time. Trying to understand that the waiter guy, he's the reflection of me. So as we do pranayama, we also have to work on the mind. And we also have to give an effort. So, these knotted or rotted impurities in the body can cause physical ailments. Like, if you're having trouble in yoga, like you have a hurt neck or something like that, or your shoulders are tense. These are all due to impurities in the body, in the channels. You know, things are getting stuck. Winds are getting stuck because there's something blocking them. because it's these impure substances that are blocking the flow, the open flow of wind throughout your body. So it's very important that we get rid of them. And asana practice can help get rid of them, but pranayama is a much more powerful way of getting rid of this dross and purifying the elements in our channels. Thank you. yesterday that you can't do. You couldn't do until this verse. Looking back over reading one, there are four different kinds of words described in the Sanskrit for inner wind. And then in reading two, there's two more. There are, I would say There's probably hundreds of words describing inner wind in the body. And it's kind of like, I heard the Eskimos had 20 words for snow. And in Sanskrit, they've got 20 different words for inner wind in the body. And they all have a different kind of rasa. They all have a different kind of taste to them. And when we were in three-year retreat, and we had been given this beautiful book, and we had nothing else to do but memorize it and look at all the words, I was happily going through the Sanskrit dictionary trying to figure out the difference in all these words. Like, what is the difference between Vayu and Vata and Prana and Maruta, you know? What's the difference between all of them? So we decided we'd give you a little taste of what their essence was. So, vata, which is the first one we had in, I think, verse 2. Here it says, when the body's winds move to and fro, and it's kind of like, in this sense, it's like a restless wind. It's like agitated or moving or restless wind. Normally, vata is used as an element of wind. We talked about the three doshas, pitta, kata, kapha, and vata, right? And vata is used to describe the body's ability of movement. So any kind of movement that happens in the body is vata. It's also used to describe an imbalance of that element. So if you have like, I don't know, an imbalance of vata, you get arthritis or something. Any kind of joint problems. Then in verse 3, we have vayu. A person is alive as long as the inner winds remain in their body. So, Vayu is like associated with the five inner winds that we categorize in the body, like Prana Vayu, Apana Vayu, Udana Vayu, Samana Vayu, Vyana Vayu. So each one of these has a different function in the body. Upon a vayu is the downward moving wind, and it causes things in the body like the elimination of substances, like feces and urine and menstrual blood and semen. Anything that's going down and out of the body, upon a vayu is responsible for that movement. And then Samana Vayu would be like digestion. You know, so these are like the five different physical functions the body has. Then number four, verse four, we have the unruly wind, Maruta. And this is like the power, wind has a power. Wind as like a storm or like a hurricane or a force of nature that is a little bit untamed. But if you rule it in, if you reign it in, it can be an incredible power in the body. And that's true for our pranayama practices. If you reign in this wind and you put it in the central channel, this incredible power comes to you. But we need to harness it. We need to direct it. We need to control it. and then the last one is prana and prana is more like the life or the life force and this is this is found in verse 5 a yogi has attained mastery of bringing the winds within and this is kind of like when, it's like a yogi word for inner wind. Like when you've already mastered it. The yogi has attained mastery of their prana. So it's like a purified wind or a tamed wind. And it's also life-giving wind. Okay. We're on to verse 6. Pāṇāyāma tata kūriāl nityam sāphu kāyā bhīyā yata sāksushum nā nādista mālā shībhi māyanti ca When you do this practice of controlling the breath, always do so with the purest of thoughts in your mind. Continue with heartfelt effort until the impurities staying within the sunray channel are completely cleared away. Sunray channel is a translation of Sushumna, which means the central channel. And we'll talk about why it's called that when we get to it at a certain point in a minute. But I just want to talk about Sakvekaya Dhyaya. Say Sakve. Kaya. Dhyaya. Dhyaya means mind. Dhyaya. The word thought comes from it. Dhyaya. And in the monastery, if you have trouble in your studies, if you're not able to grasp a concept, there's a special mantra you do. And I'll teach it to you. It's om, arapatsa, I'm sorry, om, arapatsana, dhi. We'll do it one more time. Om, arapatsana, dhi. If you know Manjushri, the deity of the angel of wisdom, whose name means gentle voice, Manjagosha, this is his mantra. And Om means Om. Arapatsana means that thing which ripens living beings and helps them. Patsa means to cook or to ripen something. So Arapatsana means this angel's job in the world is to teach, to sing, to bring people higher, to ripen or to make them, to cook their minds. My teacher used to say, cook their minds. And then ghi means, may I have your wisdom, may I understand things the way you do. And then in the monastery they say, oh, when you do this mantra, they tell little kids, six-year-old kids, they're like, you need an Arapatanari, you need an Arapatanari mantra, you know. How many? You've got to do it like this. I'll do it once in a year, okay? O Manapatanari. And then you're supposed to get smarter, okay? It's like those little smarty pills. So you see kids who are not so good in the debate ground, they're like wandering around the monastery going, you're ready? we'll try one time to die Mmm, mmm, about a part of the body. Di, di, di, di, di, di, di, di... Okay, okay. They're all going to faint. So, D means how you think, right? The F in think comes from D, okay? And D means the state of mind which is bright and wise. And here it says Sathrykaya. Sapryika means pure-minded, wholesome thoughts. and before you do a pranayama in Tibet you have to do a little bit of bodhicitta like before you start a pranayama in Tibet you have to think a little bit about all the people in the world who are in pain tonight all the lonely people all the people who are sick all the people who got sent to a hospital today all the people who were burned today all the people who had a car accident today all the people who had an American bomb come down in their house today you know before you do a panayama you must put your mind into this sort of sweet, sad state about the suffering of the world and the people who need you and the people you could comfort the people you could help if you changed into an angel like that through your yoga and you open the channels just from the inside first. And then there's no knots. Like if you take a garden hose and you tie it in a knot and then you open up the water faucet full, it's just going to fill it up. There's going to be problems. It will probably split and spray everybody like that. Pranayama that you do before you soften your heart has the same effect. So, in Tibetan tradition, first you soften your heart a bit. Then you start... And then everything is already sort of loosened up and opened, and there's no short circuits in the inner wires like that. So, Satvikaya, Dhyam. The Tibetans chose to translate Satvikaya differently. They chose to translate it as Nying Topchen. Say Nying Top. NING Topchen. CHEN And pranayama practices are difficult, and pranayama practices are liable to go wrong sometimes. And it's easy to give up. They give you headaches sometimes, they make your hands shaky sometimes, they make you depressed sometimes, and it's easy to give up. So before you start pranayama, you have to have a good intention. Satrikaya. You have to have a kind of courage. you know, okay, I remember from the Hatha Yoga Pradivika class, he said, when I start Pranayama, I'm going to run into some obstacles and problems are going to come but I don't care you know, bring them on bring them on, we call it Raksan Nandak, it means give me your best shot you know, like you tell the demons and you tell the negative spirits and all the negative energies, you say, come on you know, let's see what you can do you know, and then of course a couple hours later you're in a deep depression. But, um, but, uh, it's nice to have this, like, uh, courage. You know, and, you know, you tell them, I don't care what you do to me, and then after a few days you're ready to get up, you give up your pranayama, but if you start with this kind of courage, like, I'm gonna save the world. My pranayama, we talked about it last night, right? My practice of pranayama is gonna save the world. I'm gonna stop violence in the world with my Panyama. And then you go into it like that, and then it works a lot faster and a lot better. Then you don't wimp out after a couple of days of Panyama. So Satikaya Dhyaya. Say Satikaya. Dhyaya. Cool. And if you want to do the mantra, do it. You don't need an initiation for this mantra. Om Maru Patsa Na Dhyibhiyya. Say one more time. Om. Ara. Patsa. Patsa. Na. Na. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Remember, if you feel like you can't grasp something, like you don't get a certain idea in the class or something, do the mantra. In your mind it's okay too. If you don't remember the whole thing, just go d-d-d-d. Seriously, they do that sometimes. I think that mantra is just a trick to get us to breathe out more. Like everyone's getting lungy in the monastery because they're working too hard and then the llamas give you this mantra where you have to breathe out a huge amount of air. A lot of times when you get tension in your heart, it's because you're not exhaling enough. So it's like a tricky little mantra in many ways. So we're on class two. Yay! Page one. The yogi should first lock themselves into the lotus pose. Then they should inhale the breath through the passageway of the moon and hold it according to their ability. Then they should expel it again through the passageway of the sun. So this is where Yogi Srotmarama starts on the actual pranayamas. This pranayama in particular is called sometimes Nadi Shrodhana, which we will talk about. But the very first thing he tells us is what pose to get into, the lotus pose. Now, normally, what he means by the lotus pose, as those of you who were in chapter 1 know, is with your right foot over your thigh and then your left foot on your opposite thigh. right? And this is the lotus pose. In Tibet, they call this Dorje Kiltrum. They call this the cross diamond pose. And actually, it looks a lot like one of those little vajras. The cross, you know, this looks a lot like a vajra, right? Down here. So this is what they call it in Tibet. Because the Padmasana in Tibetan is a completely different pose. Padmasana is actually like this pose. It's like it's like the lotus pose. It's like the blossoming lotus that Shereji has in her series. Except I think your feet are together. And what it is, is the the female consort is wrapping her legs around the male in a lotus pose. And so that's the lotus in Tibet. And so they don't call it lotus. In Tibetan, they call this pose Dorje Kiltrum. So Swaparama is recommending that we get into this pose. Now, not everyone can do the lotus pose for more than a second. I mean, it kills a lot of people's knees. It really hurts people's body. If your hips aren't open enough, you could really put a strain on your knees and your knees are not replaceable. If you get problems with your knees, they could last a really long time. So you don't really want to force your body into the lotus pose if it's not ready for it. The lotus pose, it's great for bringing up the apana vayu. It's if you can do it and it's comfortable for you. But it can also be too extreme that way too. People could get lung disorders from just their sitting position. So if you're starting on a pranayama and you're using lotus and you find that you can't breathe, then maybe it's the way you're sitting. Maybe you should uncross your legs. The Tibetans recommend half lotus is perfectly fine. Or Siddhasana is also very good, which we talked about before, where one heel is inside the perineum, is pressing against the perineum, and then the other one is tucked, the toe is tucked inside here, and the heel is resting on the underside heel. So for a guy, you'd kind of be squishing your male organ. For a girl, ideally you would be pressing your second heel against your clitoris so that you're kind of targeting two very crucial chakras of the body. Basically, Siddhasana is a powerful pose because it targets two crucial chakras of the body, and it sends the energy up. But half lotus is very comfortable. And it's what most of the Tibetan practitioners I know use, is half lotus. and you can either cross your left foot up or your right foot. I think traditionally, well, there's a debate about it. I won't say traditionally. It kind of depends on which energy is more dominant in your body, which one you want to cross over, but I'm not getting into that detail. Your pranayama teacher, your pranayama master, the one that's going to sit next to you and do your pranayama with you and going to tell you what you're doing wrong and is going to give you advice on pranayama. They should give you all those details about, you know, the best way for you to sit. So, there is a certain kind of posture that the Tibetans recommend. It's called the seven-point posture of vairachana. And for pranayama, you should be noting these crucial points in your posture. The very first thing is how to cross your legs, which we already covered. Then your back should be completely straight. They say it's like each vertebra is directly on top of the next, as if it was a stack of coins. And you're just, it's like, I don't know if you ever took ballet, but they tell you there's a string here, and you're pulling up the string, and it's raising up the top of your head, and it's pushing down your sit bones at the same time, and you're just elongating your spine. You want to really lengthen your spine when you're sitting. If you crunch up, it means some kind of channel is crunching up in your body, and you want everything as open as possible in your torso. That's like the most important thing when you're doing a pranayama practice. Hands, traditionally in Tibet, they had the left down on top of your foot, and then the right on top of that, and then the two thumbs meet at your navel, which is here. Now, if you're just doing half lotus, they're not going to meet at your navel. So if you do full lotus, you see your legs are a little bit higher. So if you set your hands down, it perfectly meets out your navel. And that's a crucial chakra point. And it's important that your thumbs are there. So if you're just doing half lotus, you might want to put a cushion there so that your thumb actually reaches that area of your navel. And you're actually targeting that chakra point when you're doing pranayama. The other, you know, very acceptable means is to do, you know, nicely Jnana Mudra, either palm up or palm down on your knees. And for a lot of people, this is a more ideal posture for pranayama than your hands inside. Why? Because your body starts to get hot when you do pranayama. And it kind of cools down this area if you open your hands out a little bit more. If you keep them, I mean, say it's the desert in winter and Diamond Mountain and you have no heater. Maybe you want your hands here. But otherwise, maybe it's better out here because it gives you a little more ventilation. It's just more practical. These are things that we found during our three-year retreat that we hope will be helpful for your practice. You know, just... so your back is straight, your hands are down, your shoulders are down and even. You're not going like this, or like this, or like this. Geshe-Law carried one bag on his shoulder for like 20 years. Before Dream of Regina, he kind of looked like that. And Sharon and David had to work really hard. Because one side was always doing something different than the opposite side. And that's one of the benefits of yoga, right? Of yoga asana is that your body starts to even out. You know, so note if you have a problem with one side or the other. Your jaw, your face should be relaxed. Your jaw should be relaxed. You're not like clenching your teeth. There's a lot of tension sometimes people hold here. So they say just pay attention to that area. your eyes traditionally in Tibetan meditation are half closed like this and they're not staring at anything at all, it's like put your hand here and stare at it, it's like just about an inch away from your nose not everyone's doing this, come on now don't be shy, now you're putting your hand here and then you look at it and then you take your hand away, but you keep your eyes focused exactly that same way. So they're focusing on nothing just in front of your face. You get that feeling? That's the traditional way to hold your eyes. If that's not comfortable for you, of course you can close that. When the winds start to rise in the body, what happens automatically is that your eyes are here, but your eyeballs sort of roll up in the top of your head. It's a spontaneous Shambhavi Mudra. So sometimes people like to do that artificially, just to start with, to plant a seed for when the winds actually do start to enter the body. So you start with your eyes and focus like this, and then you just sort of raise them up. They're not crossed. They're not like looking here. They're just raised up. And that stimulates another chakra. here, right? The Ajna Chakra. And it's really good for Pranayama practice. But if you're not careful with that particular one, you can start to get a little bit of headache. So you have to be gentle about that. And then the last part of the seven point posture of Vajra Chana is the breath. The very first panayama that we'll be working with, which is tonight, is alternate nostril breathing, alternate nostril panayama, Nadi Shodhana. And in Tibetan it's called Ludo Gotu. You alternate the nostrils because you want to affect the two side channels. There are two channels moving. They start actually here on each side of your nose. They go up, they cross over, they come back. They twist around the central channel, under the skull. They continue under the skull, back, back. they twist many times. At the heart, they twist around the central channel three times. Anybody have a rosary? I think another rosary. This is how they teach in the monastery. This is how they teach this. This is the central channel. And then these are the two side channels. And then these, these twist around like this. They twist around the central channel. And then they choke it, you see? And every time they choke the central channel, the central channel gets like a garden hose with too much water in it, choked up. And then channels are spread out to the sides like spokes of a wheel. And if you look down the central channel at these other channels spurting out to the sides, they would look like a wagon wheel. And so they came to be called chakras. Those places came to be called chakras. So the whole point of Panayama is to get these two side channels to eventually dissolve into the central channel down at the bottom where they all connect in three, There's like a plumbing connection there. And the point is to get all the prana into the central channel, and then the two side channels actually atrophy, and they just slowly disappear. We're going to spend a lot of time tonight talking about the nature of the side channels. This is kind of a side channel review. Those of you who have taken Tibetan Heart Yard, you've already had this in many variations. And I think we did it in the Yoga Sutra also. But here we go again. I get to do the moon channel, she gets to do the sun channel. Moon channel is called Chandra from a root's chand, which means to shine. In Tibetan it's called Dawar Tsak, the channel of the moon. It's on the left side of your body, your left side. Its color is white and the two side channels are opaque so they're not shiny. The central channel is like fluorescent or like an incandescent like a neon but the two side channels are dull colors so it's a dull white In Sanskrit the name of the left hand channel is also ida and in Tibetan they call it Khyama. Say Khyama. Which is a translation of Lalana. Say Lalana. Lalana means a queen in Sanskrit or a woman. And so in the ancient times when the Tibetans were introduced to these two side channels the left hand channel, Ida was known as Lalana. which means the channel of the woman or the queen. Why it's called Kyanama is not clear. The ancient manuscripts are misspelled. Kyanama can either mean solitary channel, it might mean the extension of a queen's power, I don't know. We haven't resolved it yet. We did work out something about Ida. Ida can mean milky colored. It's the name of a white nectar substance. in ancient, ancient times in Tibet, this Latte and Chama was also called the Lukza. Say Luk. Luk. Luk means sheep. A sheep. And because it was white. And the Sanskrit for sheep is Edda. So it seems like Edda may also be a variation of Edda. They're both retroflex. So they're very similar. Edda. So, Edda and Edda may be the same thing. So, these are different names. Sometimes it's called the white channel. Sometimes it's called the channel on the left. Sometimes it's called the channel of wisdom. Sometimes it's called the channel of the woman. And here it gets a little confusing. I always get confused because you would expect the woman channel to be what color? Red. Now, why this? I don't know. maybe it's to say that we should join the male and the female I don't know but it always is a little confusing to me but the most important thing does any need to do with any of those things the most important thing is what kind of thoughts travel through your left hand channel what are the typical thoughts that are flowing through the left hand channel and these are thoughts of desire these are thoughts of desire I heard someone say the other day, he said, all desire is bad. You shouldn't have desire. You know? It was in a yoga class. Somebody raised their hand and said, well, what about desire for doing my yoga? And the person just kind of reported the question. But, there's bad desire and there's good desire. To desire to save the world is a wonderful thing. To desire that people should not be in pain is a wonderful thing. To desire vegan donuts is fine. To desire to be healthy, to desire to be happy, to desire to see all people happy, these are all good desires. These are fine. So what's a bad desire? Bad desire is a desire for a vegan donut. Bad desire is a desire for your yoga practice. Bad desire is to see all people free. That desire is to want to stop pain in the world. Get it? The first one has wisdom. The second one doesn't have wisdom. Okay? They're called by the same name. Okay? And it's the famous Michael, Geshe Michael, maple-covered donut example. You walk into a donut shop, there's one maple-covered donut lamp, right? There's a person coming in behind you, an older lady, who says to her husband as she walks in the door, what? I hope they have my favorite donut. What, the maple covered? Yeah. And if you're like three feet of a headwear, you can see through the glass counter there's one maple covered counter. Right? So if you have a healthy desire, if you want the donut badly, if you really want to taste that maple, I hope Anatole and Andrea had some maple caramel, vegan, don't snack. But anyway, if you want to taste it melt on your tongue, right, then what do you do? You speed up, you get to the cashier as fast as you can, because you'll be embarrassed if she sees you get it, right? And you just say, anyone with me? And, right? No. I mean, if you have wisdom, if you understand karma, if you really care about donuts, I care about donuts, it's not just a white thing for me. It's a very serious thing. So, if you are a yogi, and you understand karma, and you really care, if you want donuts, you must give the donut away. Because you want it, because you have desire, you must give it to her you must buy it for her and turn around and with a flourish you're like, this is the last time and just take it and you do it with a style you do it with style you present it to her and she's like, oh thank you oh somebody called me young and you you do it like that if you really have desire for God wisdom desire. That's fine. The purpose of being in a Buddha paradise is, you know, you're perfect. I'm sure it's going to be done as all over my paradise. No, really. Don't think you have to be deprived to be spiritual. It's not true. Your goal is to reach all happiness for everyone. Everyone will have whatever donut they want in their paradise if I succeed in my yoga. Really. And you have to think like that. So that's a good desire. That's a healthy desire. with wisdom, I will give away donuts as much as I can and assure a constant supply in my Buddha paradise. Like that. That's a wisdom. That's healthy. Your heart tells you that's healthy. You're not going to be ugly and deprived in your Buddha paradise. You're going to be the most glorious, beautiful, radiant thing because you are giving to everyone. And that's fine. And it's good to want that. But what travels in the left hand channel? Ignorant desire. It runs to the counter, it takes the last donut, it throws a bill on the counter, it makes sure it gets the right change, it hides the donut from the lady, it turns around, avoids her, walks the way around her, and goes outside and eats it. That's ignorant desire. Why? You're depriving her, and you're depriving yourself. It's just stupid. It's just stupid desire. So stupid desire runs through this channel. If you do your yoga well, if you do this alternate nostril breathing pranayama well, you open up this channel, you release the winds. Then the winds are complete to flow out of that channel and the channel will start to atrophy. The channel will start to disappear. And eventually it just leaves your body. You can't be selfish ever again. You see? It's a very beautiful... All this from just breathing up the right nostril, the correct nostril, right? So these practices are very, very high practices on reaching happiness. It's not just to clear your sinuses. These are very, very high spiritual practices. So are you at the right-hand channel? Does everybody know where they run? Yeah? Some people say no. The central channel starts here, but a little bit about an inch, two inches inside your forehead. It runs under your skull, along the side here, and then it goes straight down right about where your spine is. at the back, all the way down to your sacrum area, where it sort of curves around, and it ends at the tip of your sexual organ. That's the central channel. And this is the channel of wisdom thoughts. If we could get the winds into this channel, we would see emptiness directly. If we have the winds in this channel a little bit, we understand emptiness intellectually. So, the thing that's blocking off these two channels, or this channel, is the two side channels. They start here, respectively on the right and the left, right at your nostrils. In fact, that's the reason why you have a nose. Like, the channels made the nose. It's not as if the channels are in the body. The channels formed first, and the body formed around the channels. The reason we've got arms and legs, and we look like, vaguely starfish-like. is because of how the channels run. So they run up, I'll do the right one since that's the one I'm doing anyway. It runs up here, then it crosses here at the Ajna Chakra. It makes a little loop like Isla was doing, and it chokes off the central channel here. Then it continues up the right. Then it chokes off the central channel at the top. Then it continues down right about the area of the throat. It makes another loop around the central channel and chokes it off. At the heart, it makes three loops around the central channel. So the heart is actually the hardest area of the body to open because it's the one that's most knotted up. It's the most important area of the body, actually. If you can release the knot at the heart chakra, you're home free. Then it continues down to the navel, makes another knot. continues down about a hand's breadth from the navel. This is all at the back, right? The central channel is running in the back. I'm like doing it at the front because you wouldn't be able to see me if I was here, but you know the channels are all running down the back. Don't get caught into thinking that they're pasted on the front of your body. So they make another knot here, they make another knot here, and then they make a couple more knots at the bottom. part of the two side channels break off at this point here and they run down the two legs why we have the two legs so that's where our two side channels are flowing the left channel is just exactly the same as the right on the left hand side making each knot So, whereas the... Well, first I have to tell you all these Sanskrit names. This one, the white one on the left, is called the Chandranadi. It's called the moon channel. The one on the right is called... Suryanadi. It's called the sun channel. Surya, with the long U. You can see it in your reading. Why is it called the sun channel? because it's responsible for the creation of the sun and day. And it's all this energy. It's like the yab energy. It's the male energy. It's hot. It's fiery. It's angry. It's also called pingala, which means the reddish gold channel. In Tibetan, it's ni mesa, which means sun, sun channel. But Tibetan also call it Roma, which means the channel of taste. Or Rasuna in Sanskrit, the channel of taste. So this is where all of our thoughts of ignorant, disliking things come from. I say I didn't really enjoy the waiter bringing me something that I didn't ask for. How would I ignorantly dislike it? You'd like You know, be snotty and say Take that back Or blame it on him You would be blaming it on him You would be thinking that he was the cause Of some kind of unpleasant dining experience Whereas in fact Who is the cause of the unpleasant dining experience? Me It's me It's my fault So it's not that we can't dislike things in our world It's not like I can't want my dining experience to be perfect. That's an okay thought. Just like it's an okay thought to want everyone to be happy. But to think that it's somebody else's fault or somebody else's responsibility. Or it has nothing to do with you. Like something unpleasant is happening in your life. Or there's someone unpleasant right in front of you yelling at you. And you're not completely responsible for that. That's the kind of thoughts that's running in the right-hand channel. You know, you're stupid. It's your fault. Any kind of blame, any kind of anger towards somebody else, all negative states of mind come from ignorance. Anytime you're unhappy with somebody, it's because of these two winds running in the side channels. If you understood emptiness perfectly, there would be absolutely no way you could ever be upset at somebody. Because you would know so well that it was your fault. It would be so clear to you. So every time you're upset, just think, oh, the winds, they're running in the wrong place. Sometimes that's helpful, right? Just to think, it's not me, it's the winds. It's like, if I could just get the winds over a little to the left. Just scoot them over a little bit. I knew someone in three or two, you know, every time they got a mental affliction, they were just like, like picture their winds shooting into the central channel. They would just stop whatever they were doing. And it's powerful. It's powerful to have that visual image of what's happening physically in the body. You know, because as you visualize something, it will happen because the winds go where the mind goes. So if you have this visual image of where your thoughts are running in the body, you can actually move it by thinking of them running in a different way. And this is the basis of all pranayama practice. The basis of all pranayama practice is not snorting through your nostrils. It's the mind. It has to do with the breath. It has to do with the wind. But it's all about the inner winds and the mind. so another really interesting thing about the two side channels is that one of them is responsible for us seeing objects in our world and one of them is responsible for seeing subjects like they talk about um duality right they talk about duality the two side channels are responsible for seeing them as separate. Meaning, there's a waiter out there that's not coming from me. Right? When we get the winds into the central channel, there's no more duality like that. There's no more thinking that things are out there and we are separate from it. We realize when the winds are in the central channel, that everything is a projection of our own minds. That everything is coming from the same source. It's actually coming from this drop inside our hearts. That drop that we talked about earlier, the Mishik Pei Tigre. It's coming from there. And it's ripening as an experience of me and an experience of the outside world. But it's all coming from the same source. Now there's a debate in the scriptures, heavy, heavy debate in the scriptures, about which channel has the subject and which channel has the objects. And I think it's a really good exercise for you to go home and think about it. Like, okay, one is anger and one is desire. Now, which would be objects and which would be subjects? According to the Yoga Sutra, what is it? Bhuvana jnanam surya samyama. What does that mean? What does it mean? What does the line mean? Bhuvana, what does it mean? Earth. Jnana. Right. You'll know the earth. Surya Samyaman. By focusing on the sun, which means the sun channel. What's Chandra, Tara, Yuhasjnana. So Chandra? The moon, the left hand channel. Tara? Stars. Yuhasjnana. you'll know the arrangement of stars by focusing on the moon channel. So these are a code word in the Yoga Sutra. The arrangement of stars is actually drops of consciousness inside your body. And then you'll know the earth is actually objects, right? The objects outside of you. In the Tibetan scriptures, a lot of times we find this reversed. We find that subject's state of mind is the right-hand channel, And the objects are in the left-hand shot. Now you guys go home and figure it out. Now think about what would be most logical for you. We each have our own theories. Right? Our own personal theories. Okay. we're going to actually do a Nadi Shadana so there are there are a couple ways to do this meditation I know most of you being here Yoga Mecca of Jiva Mukti will probably already know the alternate nostril breathing as it's done in the Indian yoga lineage. So we thought we would do the Tibetan version with you first. The Tibetans have a version of Nadi Shodhana called Lumro Gocuk. Say Lumro. Gocuk. It's the nine-step breathing practice. So sit in the seven-point posture of maratona, as we talked about before. See, I'm doing half lotus. I'm not like some big yodier, you know, just mellow. Get your back straight, close your eyes. Focus for a minute just watching your breath. Now picture your body inside as completely hollow. You can see maybe it's filled with this light color, like blue light, like the sky. Picture your body is filled with nothing but sky. Go from your head all the way down to your feet, even in the smallest crevices in your ears and down to your fingertips. Now picture your central channel running from the space between your eyebrows up and around then straight down where your spine used to be, curving around at the bottom. Oh, no, I'm sorry. This one, the central channel stops in this meditation at the navel. So picture it from your Ajna Chakra right down to your navel. Then picture a white channel running to the left beside it. You don't have to picture it crossing at all. It's just running next to the center channel. It goes all the way down to your left nostril and then traces the path of the central channel on the left. going down a little bit below the navel and curving towards the center. Then the right channel, which is like blood red, the central channel you can picture as like fire color. These are all channels made of light. The right-hand channel goes from your right nostril and runs alongside your central channel all the way down to about an inch below your navel where it curves in towards the center. then the two channels, the three channels sort of meet in the center, forming an intersection of the three channels. Now picture in your left hand channel there are all these thoughts of wanting something, ignorant and thinking you can grab something and it will be yours. Instead of thinking, if you want it, you have to give it away. Thinking about possessing or owning things. It's all running through the left hand channel. then all our thoughts of anger and other negative thoughts running through the right hand channel. And this practice of purifying our channels is going to get rid of these thoughts. So, you take an inhale, picture the limbs down at that intersection, and then exhale, picture it going through the left-hand channel, and all of the negative thoughts of the left-hand channel being pushed out. Send it all the way out to your nostrils and out the room behind you and out into the air. It just dissipates and disappears. I know this is too long for one breath. I'm going to explain the meditation and then we'll do it without taking extra breaths in between. Then you inhale back through the left hand channel and you picture yourself inhaling pure air of wisdom then it goes all the way down through your left hand channel and over into your right then you exhale through the right hand channel you see all those thoughts of anger and negativity being pushed out your right nostril going all the way out of this room out of the building and then into the air dissipating and disappearing. And then you inhale pure thoughts through the right hand channel. It goes all the way down to the intersection. Then you exhale through the center channel, the channel of wisdom. Picture the air not leaving through your nostrils at all but actually through the space between your eyebrows. So now we'll try it on our breath. Now that you know what to picture, inhale through your center channel, then exhale through your left nostril. Inhale through your left nostril. They meet at the bottom then exhale through the right channel and out the right nostril. Inhale through your right hand channel, then exhale through your center channel. Inhale back to the center and exhale through your love channel. Inhale, left. And then exhale, right. Inhale, right. And then exhale to the center. Inhale through the center. Now you can add your fingers if you want to try. Hold your thumb against your right nostril and exhale through the left hand channel. Then inhale through the left hand channel. See the air going all the way down to the middle point and exhale through the right hand channel, holding your ring finger over your left. Keep that visualization. Then inhale through the right hand channel. Hold both nostrils for just a minute. Then let go and exhale through both, but exhale through the central channel and out the asana. One more time, inhale through the asana down to the center, hold your right nostril, exhale through the left channel. Inhale through the left channel. Hold both nostrils for just a second and then hold the right, exhale through the right channel. Inhale back through the right. Hold both for just a second. And then exhale through the Ajna Chakra, down through the middle chakra. Inhale. And exhale. Okay, you can open your eyes. So this is the visualization that goes with the Nadi Sharna in the Tibetan tradition. You are not just picturing, you're not just focusing on the breath through the nostrils. You're actually focusing on the winds going in through your side channels. And you're using your mind to purify the two side channels. So we're going to take a break. And we'll be back. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, we've got the... Can I show you a whole bit? I think it's helping. I just did it. I know. I can talk to you. I can do that. Do this and tell them to come in and say, but they'll get more. Tell them that's a change. I might tell them about this mistake, too. And then we've got like four verses. We can just go through five. And then let's go straight to him. Okay, yeah, so we can just read these. Or is the next person this one and this one? Okay? What's my next thing? This one. Nothing much. You're supposed to, yeah, there's a homework question. Is it like, you're listening to me? It's, um... Okay, I got it. I remember that. Yeah, okay. So you want me to stop? Yes. And then external. Thank you. I know you haven't seen each other really like that, but, you know, it's 11 o'clock. Holy angels in the front, you know, what do you do? They're angels, you know, what can you say to them? We're talking about the song. Okay. So, Lady Ruth and Kali Anitama were talking about songs, so I'm going to talk about songs, too. I'm going to talk about the word nadi and nadi shodhanam. Nadi. Say nadi. Nadi. It's a retroflexed da, so you have to do that chin-da-da, ton turnover thing. Da. Da. Then say di. Di. Di. Then say na-di. Na-di. There you go. So that's na-di. And na-di literally means, you could say making a sound. Or na-da, na-di, same thing. And a nadi can be a stream of water, or it could be a hollow tube inside your body through which energy flows. And, you know, in this case it's the latter. It's something that has a flow to it. It's something like a stream or a flow of energy. And the word nadi comes from that, nadi. Note, yeah. Because as the water flows in the stream and it goes over the rocks and stuff, it makes this tinkling sound. You know, it makes a sound. And as the winds go through your channels in your body, they too make a sound. And that's described a lot in the fourth chapter of Hatha Yoga Pradipika, where they're talking about Nada Yoga, which is listening to the inner sounds inside your body. They're not just random inner sounds. They're inner sounds that come when the winds rush through your channels. And they sing. The channels sing. So that's Nadi. And then, of course, Shodana. It means to clean out. Shodana means a purifier. Like the Na is the Ur part. so it comes from a root which means to purify and the word sweet comes from that and the word persuade because you're trying to convince someone it's something good and the word hedonism comes from that also I like those roots Those cognates, those are funny for me. In Tibetan, the Nadi Shodhana is called Salung Jungwa, or cleaning out the winds and channels. Or you can just say Sa Jong. Say Sa. Sa Jong. Sa Jong. Sa Jong. That's the Tibetan for Nadi Shodhana. There's one error in the Tibetan on page 2. Dorje Kiltrung should be spelled, if anybody knows Tibetan, with a K-R-U-N-G and not a D-R-U-N-G. And for those of you who don't know Tibetan, you'll have to ask your, what do you call those people? Your TAs. You'll have to ask your TAs because I don't have a whiteboard and it's too late to just break it out right now. But anyway, TAs, please draw a K-R-U-N-G so people can fix their reading. The one last thing to say. Well, let me read the next verse first. So we're going on to page three. Pranam Suryena Cha Kursya Purayet Udaram Shanae Vidhi Vat Kumbakam Kutva Punash Chandrena Rechayet Then draw the breath again in through the passageway of the sun, of filling your abdomen slowly. Freeze the breath there in the proper way, and then expel it out again through the passageway of the moon. So, this one is talking about kumbhaka or bumbha, bumbhachen in Tibetan. It's the art of retaining the breath, right? Holding the breath in a capsule, holding the breath in a vase. they say, still in India, they called vases kumbhas. So sometimes you see this as the vase practice, but really it's more like a sealed vase. Normally when we see vases, we're like this. It goes out and then there's an opening there, but this is not really the vase that they're talking about. They're more talking about a vase that has a cover to it, like a pitcher almost. So they're talking about something that seals itself. Something that you could put water in in ancient India and it would stay pure. Because it has a lid over it. So it's like you're sealing the air inside a vessel. And one thing to say here, we don't advise right now that you hold the breath on an inhalation for any length of time. Because that tends to get a lot of tension, especially in your heart area. And it can be very dangerous for lung. So when you're doing the practice, if you want to practice any kind of retention of the breath, when you're exhaling from your left nostril or from your right nostril or from both nostrils, at the end of the exhale in the Tibetan system, you just pause. just for a few seconds, you know just pause at the end of the exhale if you hold your breath on the exhale you won't get so many lung problems so many wind problems so there are two ways of doing this meditation one is holding it on the inhale and one is holding it on the exhale and we advise for now to try and extend your exhale as long as possible and then see what happens if you just kind of you know, pause after it. And then it's not so much of a, you know, like it's not like you're going swimming and you're going to take a big deep dive and you're going to have to hold your breath, you know, like pranayama shouldn't be some kind of tension thing. It should be really natural. So when you're coming in, When you're inhaling, you inhale through your left nostril. And it's almost like at the end of your inhale, you're still pulling in, although you're not pulling in breath anymore. You're just hanging out at that pulling in stage for a little bit. You know, it's not like you go, you know. It's not so drastic like that. It's really natural. And if it's not natural, it's probably you're doing it wrong. It's very gentle. Shanai Shanai. It's very gentle. It's very subtle. So, practice that. Practice mostly on the exhale. And then practice just seeing the pauses between the inhale and the exhalation. There is a natural pause if you watch your breath between an inhale and exhale and between an exhale and an inhale. And you don't have to hold it, you just have to watch it. And it naturally gets longer. So the best advice for doing something like a kumbhaka, because what we want to do is get to a state of kevala kumbhaka, where the breath is being held naturally, spontaneously, where your breath just stops automatically. You don't want to have to hold it. You want to get to the point where you can induce something that happens automatically. So what you do is you just watch that pause between the exhale and the inhale. Or you watch that pause between the inhale and the exhale. And you try and stay with it in your mind. And you don't push anything. And that's what will induce a kevala kumbuka. That's what will induce your breath automatically stopping. And if suddenly, you know, you're there and you're watching it, and it kind of hangs out for like a minute or two, cool. That's great. But don't force it, you see. Anyway, this is the tradition from my holy mamas to, you know, my experience in three-year retreat, and then on to you. So, yeah. We're on verse number nine. drink in the air through the same nostril with which you just expelled it, then hold the breath, trying always to increase the duration. And when you exhale, use the opposite nostril. Be sure to breathe slowly and never forcefully. Navegata Not much to say here. Very, very strongly advise that if you do any kind of holding, do it after the exhale and not after the inhale. Very, very strongly advise that. You'll get much, much better results right now. Next verse. Drink the breath in through the milky channel, restrain it, and then exhale it back again through the other. Then drink in the racing wind with the rust-colored channel, hold it, and expel it through the channel on the left. So, the only thing to say about this verse is we get another wind. We get a, what is this, a fifth wind so far in chapter 2, which is called Samira. Say Samira. Samira. And Samira is like, we called it the racing wind. And Samira na means something that's moved or tossed or thrown around. And so it gives us this sense of how the wind blows, you know, how the wind moves other things, right? Like if the wind is moving something else on the street, and you're watching it, and it's doing this dance up in the air. And that's Samira. That's the sense of Samira. And to say one thing about the Tibetan, every single one of these words in Tibetan is Lung. So they're all the same word in Tibetan. So that's a problem. That's a huge problem in the Tibetan text. So you don't know what they're talking about. Are you talking about the breath? Are you talking about the inner winds? Are you talking about air in general? Or are you talking about... No, they have no differentiation between any of these words. So that's what's so wonderful about studying the Sanskrit, is you get all these different rasas, you get all these different tastes of the different winds, and, you know, then the Tibetans have certain things that the Sanskrit doesn't. In Tibetan, you get very detailed descriptions of the different values and stuff like that, that are sometimes not found in Indian scriptures. So, you need both. It's nice to have both. Verse number 10. 10b. 10b. keep practicing this way, first to the channel of the sun and then to the lunar channel, always being careful to do it properly, keeping the breath light. Those who are self-controlled will then be able to clear out the entire system of inner channels within the space of three months. so can everyone do this practice and succeed in it in three months no only those who are self-control yeah he says those who are self-control and that's the catch right that's the small point in the contract you can succeed in three months if you are self-controlled. What does Yamina usually mean in these scriptures? You're keeping your Yamas and the Yamas, right? It doesn't mean... It means you are self-controlled in how you treat other people, right? I think in our case, sometimes you work backwards from the external world to your heart. You want the external world to see where is your karma going right now? What are your major problems in your channels? So as a country, as a people, we have this Iraq thing going on. You know? As a people, we are doing extreme violence. We are shaming our country's name. We should be ashamed. You know? We are an example to the world of someone who is not self-controlled and can't control themselves. They got angry and reacted. And it's like if we got into a fight, which we get into a fight but we do it privately, right? But if we did it out in front of you guys on the stage, it would be like that. You see? And so we are not self-controlled as a people. But according to all this idea, according to all this theory it's coming from where? It's coming from our personal lack of self-control. Iraq is a direct result of the lack of control of prana and thoughts within each one of us. You see, it's not, we can't blame on Congress or on Bush or on the Pentagon. They are creations of our prana. They are creations of our thoughts. So, this is a clue in this verse about how to succeed in your pranayama. You know, people always, I hear people that say, like, I've got to do more, we did our first Pilates class today. Like, we needed a break from all these heavy-duty classes in New York. She says, let's go to so-and-so who's going to kill me, you know. I said, no. She said, let's go to so-and-so. I said, too far, because they're also going to kill me. And then there's a Pilates. I said, let's try Pilates. And you go there and they just sort of exercise your stomach a little bit or something. Cool. I don't know, for me it was really good today. And you hear people say, I have panayama problems. Probably I don't have much strength in my stomach yet. Or I mean no abdominal. Or my interstitial, intercostal spaces like the trapezoid in me. It's probably, I need to work more on that. No, they were saying that. In the past, they were saying that. And then you feel like saying, well, no, you have to stop Iraq. And then your pranayama will. You see? That's what this verse is saying. You want to succeed in pranayama fast? Don't worry about what kind of catheter you're scrubbing up your nostril. Or don't worry so much about your abdominal strength. and don't try to get your foot behind your head necessarily. I mean, what can you do to help stop that war? And do you care? And do you think about it? Does it keep you up late at night? Is that what I mean? Think. What can you do as an individual to stop that violence? Which is being done in our name, with our money. and which is, in Tibet they call shamden. Shamden means pulling my leg down, pulling me down into the mud. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace for our people and our country. And what are you doing? Are you doing anything? If Iraqis come here in ten years and show you their main children, will you be able to say you did something? Did you contribute to trying to stop it? Anything, you know? Did you help? Or did you just kind of be quiet until hoping the Congress will end it sometime? So you have a choice. You have to do something. Write a letter to somebody. Or refuse to pay your tax. Or do something to disassociate yourself from the karma. Suddenly your pranayama will take off. Suddenly you'll be able to get your leg up behind your head. You see, it's all coming from these causes. This is the real root of success in the pranayama. Maybe then it will come in three months. Okay? Page 7. Verse 11. Pratarmadyam dhene sayam ardharatre ca kumbhakam Shannayar arshiti paryantam chaktur varam Samab yaset One should practice holding the capsule four times a day at dawn, midday, in the evening and at midnight. Do it slowly. and a full 80 rounds each time. So, I don't know. You want to do the first half of verse or the second half of verse first? Yeah, let's do the second half first. Okay, so this full 80 rounds each time. There's a really funny text in Tibetan where there's a certain pranayama where you're supposed to hold your breath and then you circle one knee and you circle another knee and then you do a finger snap. And they say in the text, do like 80 of those before you breathe again, right? So you try it. You try circling two knees and finger snapping 80 times before you breathe out. It's impossible. I mean, it's impossible for the person who just starts out, right? You've done it the second day. And then the second day, you're supposed to double that count. And you're supposed to keep doubling it for the length of 14 days, I believe. And this is what it says in the text. It's exactly what it says in the text. But then you get the oral lineage. You go to India, and the refugee Tibetan master lamas are all in South India at Sereme Monastery. And you're like, holy lama, will you teach me this text? And they're like, yes. And you make the mandala. And then they say, well, actually, they just tricked you. This is just a protection in the text for people who get the text without an oral lineage. So they make it completely impossible for you to do it in any practical way to discourage people who just got the text on their own, who didn't have an oral lineage to follow. And then he said, okay, I'll tell you the real advice. And then he whispers to us privately the real advices of this secret pranayama about the knee thing. And so we got the real advice. And we think this is something very similar to that. 80 rounds, it's impossible. Don't try it. I mean, it's not like, you don't want to like, 80 times, 4 times a day, you're going to go bonkers. Seriously, it's really dangerous to do this. So that's sort of our pitch about the 80 rounds. Now, in terms of four times a day, there are very special time periods where you should be practicing your meditation and your pranayama practices. And your asanas, too, if you can manage it all, squeeze it all into these special times a day. But dawn and dusk are really amazing times of day because they're when the two... Well, it's... The energies of the two side channels are like male and female energies, right? You know, there's a yab energy and a yum energy. That's the Tibetan word for male and female, right? And, um, during the day, it's primarily male energy. It's the sun energy. The sun is out and it's sun energy. And it's sun energy all around you and it's sun energy inside your body. And then, during the night, it's primarily female energy. Um, it's female energy all around you, it's female energy in your body. In fact, it's your body that's creating the day and night. But, that's another story. Just for now, you know, there's this energy. And it's inside of you and it's outside of you. And there are certain times a day when these two energies become in balance. Like the Yom energy is rising and the Yom energy is lowering. And then you get dawn. And there's like an equinox there. And it's kind of like the equinox of the seasons. That's another bigger cycle energy. And that's why those days of the year are powerful, is the equinoxes are very powerful, because those energies are coming into balance. So dawn and dusk is very important inside your body, because inside your body the two energies are in balance, and that's the time most likely when the two nostrils will be breathing out equal amounts of air. Not right now. And so when you do your meditation already, like the first job of pranayama is to get these in balance. And then the second job is to get them into the central channel. So you're already halfway there at dawn and at dusk. You're already halfway to getting the winds into the central channel because you're already balanced in your two energies of the two side channels. Then, midday and midnight are the two extremes You know, midday is like the height of the male energy And then midnight is the height of the female energy And you can use the power of the energy at its height in a different way Just like you have the summer and winter solstice You know, it's the same thing You have the height of the summer You know, it's blazing hot It's all this, like, heat energy It's male energy And it's the same every single day 24-hour day You have a height You have a certain height during the day You have a certain height of female energy During the, of course, you know Well, we should be sleeping during that time But during the time when Geshe Michael was in town Nobody sleeps at midnight So, um Which is also suspicious actually. I mean, it's very auspicious to be teaching at midnight because it's the height of the female energy. It's like there's some sort of pranic apex that you get to. And it's the time when the angels are most likely to come. I say that in the Tibetan text. Midnight is the time of the angels. So we did these traditional four sessions in our three-year retreat. Every day we got up before you even saw a light of day in the sky. You know, 3.30 in the morning we were having our tea and then we started our sadhana. And we were in deep meditation by the time daybreak happened. And then we would do another session again in midday. And then we'd do another couple sessions in evening because it's such a darn good time meditation, we squeezed in two meditation sessions in the evening, and with a little break in between, you know, but, and then at midnight, we were pretty tired, to tell you the truth, we did a very short session at midnight, like 15 minutes or something like that, you know, the other ones are like hour or two hour, but you did like 15 minutes at midnight, but at least you get it in, you know, but we were doing these traditional sessions. And one thing that we learned during that time period is that your mind switches during these times of day. You wake up at dawn and your mind is crystal clear. It's like sharp. It's almost like a razor sharp. And, but at the same time, you've just woken up. So you're not really in your body so much. So you can, um, you can sit in a state of deep meditation for a really long time and be really, really still. Your mind is really quiet. And there's also something to be said for the fact that nobody else is awake at that time. Because although you don't, you might not hear it consciously, there are like waves of other people's thoughts that will interfere with your, I mean, I don't know how you meditate in New York. There's like 9 million people's thought waves going through the air. But when When you get up at dawn, they're all asleep. So it's quiet. It's quiet in there. It's quiet in your mind. And you can be really, really still. Then midday was more like I found my male energy takes the form of analytical mind. You know, like busy mind or analytical mind. And I just, I directed it. In meditation, you can direct that energy towards, I don't know. I like to meditate on emptiness during midday. You know, I like to do those really heavy analytical meditations on emptiness. I also worked very hard on just getting to meditate of stillness because my mind was so, I don't know, exacting at that point that I could pay attention to, okay, I've been on the breath for 11 and a half minutes and 20 seconds. I decided I would work on stillness during the middle point of the day, and it worked for me. And so what I'm saying is that you need to go and do your pranayama and do your meditation at all of these times of the day and then see how it works for you and see the different elements that it brings you. Like evening time, I found, was very elaborate visualizations. When I visualized my inner body, for instance, you know, all sorts of powerful visualizations came that wouldn't come at any other time. You know, it's sort of like female energy just gave rise to like these amazing pictures in my mind and elaborate pictures. But time sort of slowed down in the evening time. Like time went really fast at dawn and it got slower as the day progressed. So all these things, you need to go into a quiet place. You need to find what is the best meditation time for you. I know you in New York don't have time to meditate four times a day. You barely have time to do 10 minutes or 15 minutes one time a day. But take some time to go and explore what's the perfect time and then build your schedule around it. You know, if you like to get up at dawn and meditate, figure out a way you can get up at dawn and then take a nap before you have to go to work. You know? Like, make your meditation and your panayama important enough that you build your life around it, and you don't just squeeze it into any free period of time that you have when you're all rushed and busy and your mind is tired. So, you know, pay attention to the times of day. Pay attention to where your mind is and where you're the best at during those times of day. Thank you. There's a huge question on this. Read verse 12. At the very lowest stage, one begins to sweat. At the intermediate stage, one's body starts to shake. At the highest stage, one attains a kind of stillness, and then the inner winds are tightly under control. This is just personal experience. The sweating is a sign that your kundalini is starting to rise. The Tibetan texts distinguish between different kinds of sweating. Some are significant, some are not. Different kinds of heat and some are significant and some are not. I think the kind of sweat you get from a fairly, breaking a sweat in an asana practice is beneficial. And I think that's a sign that you have some, we would just say you're sweating, right? But actually it's a sign that there's some kind of inner heat building up. Like a small amount of inner heat, and that's good. Then as your pranayama and asana and meditation gets better, you will find some kind of shaking. There's good shaking and there's bad shaking. Shaking hands, trembling hands, is a bad sign. That's a pranayama problem. That's a prana is blocked. Or you're getting low. And you feel anxiety and you feel nervous and your hands tremble. That's a bad sign. There's another kind of trembling, you're trying to hold, I don't know, Navasana, and your leg's out there and it's starting to tremble. Or I get, if you're stretching, doing a certain stretch, and then the leg starts to tremble, that's a good sign. That means some prana is moving through a channel that doesn't normally move through that channel. And that's a good sign. So you have to distinguish between sort of a bad trembling of the hands and in a good trembling that a channel's being cracked open. Then there's a kind of a jolting sensation. Like suddenly you're like... It just comes like this. And those of you who practice more and more, it can even become a distraction. Right, you're trying to talk to somebody. You're like... You know? And that's a jolt of prana like moving big time through your channels. And that's a very good sign. So what I wanted to say on this verse, don't be concerned. Be happy. Rejoice. It's a very good sign. You might find it happening as you fall to sleep. One good jolt just as you fall to sleep. That's prana shifting, movement of prana in the channels. If you get these sudden jolts in your body, after you're practicing Padajama for a while or asana for a while. That's a really good sign. So don't be concerned, you know. You will look a little weird and you will act a little weird. People will think there's something wrong with you. You should be happy. They might be accompanied by almost like a blackout, like a momentary blackout. There's very commonly an inner sound at that moment. It sounds like you're in a vault and somebody just slammed this huge vault door and it was like, there's an implosion in your mind. It's like, you know. And the fourth chapter will describe that in detail. But if you've had it happen, you know. It feels like the air pressure changed in the plane or like somebody just hit a gong in your head. It's a big double sound. And that's prana. That's the sound of prana being released in the body. So be happy. Don't be concerned. That's healthy. That means your prana is almost going well. when your practice is going wrong. So these occasional jolts, flashes down the spine, like feeling, I don't know, a thrill up your spine, like that, a feeling of thrill up your spine, or a jolt feeling. That's a very good thing. That's sort of what we would call an intermediate stage in your practice. That's what he's talking about here. As you progress, then you reach a point of total stillness. stillness. The jolting stops. There's a... Your posture changes. Like, it's very comfortable and typical to sit like totally good posture, like West Point on the first half inch of the chair posture, you know. And that's a good sign. Like, there's a craving in you to sit straight. And you just feel balanced and comfortable, and you don't feel comfortable sitting any other way. There's a hunger, and there's a contentment in being completely erect, and high posture. And that means the central channel is really straightening out, and prana is moving, starting to move in it, and that's a very good sign. And then that's a company on a higher, that progresses into a kind of inner silence. The booming stops, the trembling stops and you're just in a you're often in a state of total silence and then kevala kumbaka and then you'll you'll be sitting in a library or something or you're just reading a book and then you realize you haven't breathed for 5 minutes or 10 minutes and then you're really getting good things are really happening then and you might be on the verge of seeing emptiness directly so these are kind of progression that you can expect if you do proper asana, proper panayama, proper meditation. Guru Padi Sita Margena. What? According to the methods granted to you, day by day by your direct teacher. Otherwise it doesn't happen. And then you'll go through the sweating heat process, you go through the jolting process, you go through the silent process, you go through the change in the alignment of the body, and then finally into spontaneous stopping of the breath. And then shortly after that, you'll see emptiness directly. If you get there, your life is done. Your life has meaning. Your life has meaning. Human life has meaning. And then within a short time, you will be like a being who can save the whole world. So that's cool. It all starts with this. Really, really. Go from here to saving the world personally. That's really nice. One thing I didn't tell you about the last verse. If you are doing a deep retreat, and you should all try, you know, even just for a weekend, go away on a deep retreat. Go to someplace quiet, and then try and practice those four times a day. You know, get up at dawn, then take a nap. then do another session at midday, then do another session at evening, then try and do another session, it doesn't have to be midnight, you can do it at 11 if you want. But something happens when you do that very late night session, you're almost asleep, so you get into this state of meditation where you're halfway between waking and sleeping. And then stuff can happen when you do go to sleep. It's like you continue practicing and you do your practice in your dreams. So it's like you're doing your practice 24 hours. That's another reason to do this four times a day. Is that you're just flooring your mental state with this kind of practice. And you're not doing anything else. And it's wild how radically you can change. And, you know, like Geshe said, if you're doing something like this, especially, where you're doing practice four times a day, then when you fall asleep, you know, something like a jolt could happen in your spine, or some amazing things can happen to you, you know, as you watch yourself fall to sleep. Okay, next verse. Jalenashrama jaltenam gatramardhanam achavet. Dhrdhatha laguta chava tena gatrasya jayate. You should make a habit of taking the sweat that drops off you from your efforts and massaging it back into your limbs. It will make them strong and light. So, you know, this kind of sweat that we're looking at, you know, in asana practice, the sweating starts as a method of removing toxins from your body, right? And it's really good to break a sweat. if you're doing an asana practice and you're not breaking a sweat, then, you know, you might want to try a little bit more challenging asana practice, except for these days when Gechela wants to do Pilates. We didn't break a sweat today. But he wanted a day off, and, you know, an hour of Pilates is better than nothing, so I'll take it. But in general, you know, it's really, really good to get the toxins out of your body. It helps to, it's all a part of getting that dross out of the elements, right, that we were talking about before. When you're talking about, when your body starts getting more and more pure, say you've had an asana practice for quite some time, what you're getting more than toxins is just, there's like a light sheen that happens on your body, You break a sweat, but it's not like you're dripping. It's like there's just a sheen over you, and it's a radiance. And it's a kind of pure, there's a pure element that's coming out of your body. And at this point, it's like, I don't know, we were in three-year retreat, and I started to notice that the smell of my body changed, you know? And as your practice gets purer and purer, you start to smell less and less accurate and more and more sweet. You know, you're just like, you have this sweet smell to you And that's when you know that your body is purifying itself And that your sweat is like, actually like this holy thing that's coming off of you, you know So, you know, one thing to say You shouldn't, I don't know, we have this experience where, you know People are asking us about Bikram Yoga Like, should we go to this like really hot room And, you know, to us, that kind of overt drawing out of the liquids of our body is a little bit draining to us, you know, and it's a little bit artificial. Like, you should do it with your own body and not, like, from outside source. When we were in three-year retreat, at the beginning of retreat, we would try and do the asana practice in the sun, in the wash. We had this little empty river, you know, it was just sand. And we would put our yoga mats there. And we would try and do, in the middle of the day, in the sun, in the desert. It's just not the right thing to do for your asana practice. But we had to learn, right? We tried everything. That's the great thing about three retreats. You can try everything. You have so much time. So we tried it. And we realized that it just exhausted us. It drained our energy. It exhausted us. So it's not so much that you want to just sweat so that your energy all pours out of your body. You want that kind of a light sheen. You know? That kind of... And the same kind of thing will happen in your pranayama. That happens in your asana practice. And along with that kind of purifying of the body. That's a sign that your body is slowly turning into light, by the way. You know? Your sweat is starting to smell sweet like a Buddha. They say that the Buddhas have this incredibly sweet smell to them. And even if you're blind, you would be detracted just by your nose. You would start following the smell because it's so alluring. And it's the smell of their body and it's a purity. And then along with that, you start to get a lightness and agility to your body with no more pains. And that's all a sign that the winds are getting pure. the dross is getting burned out of your body. And you feel like dancing, like on next Friday. Right? Okay. You better do this. I gave Geshe Michael the next one because I was afraid of Sharon Gannon. Holy Sharon Davey. But she's not here. Right now? He'll do it tomorrow. He'll do it in front of Sharon. There's this verse that says, you should eat milk and butter. I was like, no way, I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that verse. Because you have to do that verse. Are you sure you don't want to do it? Yeah. I think we should stop there. one thing to mention those of you who weren't here yesterday Thursday night is special we have a guest speaker for the first half coming very high lama from our lamaster and he's going to speak about lamas about how to find a teacher and how to keep a teacher so I really encourage you to try to come on Thursday if you can. And then the other important class is A Week From Friday, which is a special dancing class. And we're going to throw a party to celebrate the 20th anniversary of our project to save ancient books. I got the CD today. It's very beautiful. Everyone will get a free one. It has thousands and thousands of pages of English on it for the first time. so be ready to party on Friday and bring your friends and party we'll just party we'll have a little what do we call it politically correct we got a little bit of class before that but then we get a party so those two nights are special we'll do a prayer to end with this 谢谢大家 Thambath in it of our soul. Thank you.