<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/11ydAbHO8A1QM2VVyJO7wEw9zd3vYiRT-/preview" width="100%" height="80" allow="autoplay"></iframe> **Speaker 1** So, what a love of Christi's fighting of experts. **Speaker 1** Heart, spiritual teachings **Speaker 1** Over Thanksgiving? I guess. **Speaker 1** Yeah. **Speaker 1** From every 22nd to 25th. **Speaker 1** You get to go home to sleep, I guess. **Speaker 1** Uh, someone would say, **Speaker 1** better put you make better poster, okay? **Speaker 1** Oh, okay. **Speaker 1** Sad. Okay. **Speaker 1** Now, **Speaker 1** Arnie's poster. **Speaker 1** My father. **Speaker 1** My father, we knew it was. **Speaker 1** Uh, **Speaker 1** he's doing a fundraiser **Speaker 1** for the Jensen Kamo board, which is meant to raise $100,000 for the broke Hong Kongoian **Speaker 1** temple board, which is probably all. And so if you'd like to go help raise money for the **Speaker 1** designing and the painting in the board. Okay. **Speaker 1** Most are the visuals on November 30th. More fun than Beowulf, supposedly. I just got a review of **Speaker 1** 我会被迫到过来的一半的课题 **Speaker 1** 这真的好 **Speaker 1** 我看你了 **Speaker 1** 好 这一本词 **Speaker 1** Do you have this a beautiful poster? **Speaker 1** I was thinking, oh, I should do some yoga and art. **Speaker 1** I don't know how exactly that. **Speaker 1** All right. **Speaker 1** In general, two of those posters here work, okay? **Speaker 1** It's okay to have a problem with poverty, okay? **Speaker 1** January 12th to the 23rd. **Speaker 1** So now, then, too? **Speaker 1** Yeah. **Speaker 1** What? **Speaker 1** Diamond 20 Sutra. **Speaker 1** Best sutra in the universe. **Speaker 1** The Dalai Lama never teaches the Democrats. **Speaker 1** Never. **Speaker 1** No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. **Speaker 1** He's fine. **Speaker 1** Yeah. **Speaker 1** He got some kind of pressure psychically to teach you in New York. **Speaker 1** So you should go. **Speaker 1** All right. **Speaker 1** Thank you. **Speaker 1** Oh, aciny.org. **Speaker 1** What's it? aciny.org. **Speaker 2** So we are on to Wednesday night. **Speaker 2** Reading games. **Speaker 2** Does that mean we don't have to leave for two more days? **Speaker 2** Hmm. **Speaker 2** I'm getting all sad that we have to, you know, tonight's the last class. **Speaker 2** We are going to verse 65. **Speaker 2** This is the second verse of the reading week. **Speaker 2** Or maybe the third verse. **Speaker 2** Asyakyatattva kodhanam mutyanam api samatam **Speaker 2** skottam garaksha natinam nado pasanam bucchate **Speaker 2** There is a practice which has been recommended for those who haven't yet been able to perceive suchness. **Speaker 2** And this is the practice of sacred sounds taught by the projector garaksha. **Speaker 2** So this is a practice called Nada Yoga. **Speaker 2** And Nada Yoga is listening to sacred sounds. **Speaker 2** And there are two different versions of this practice. **Speaker 2** And the first version of this practice is what it's talking about in this verse here. **Speaker 2** It's using some kind of sound practice to get yourself to a deeper understanding of emptiness. **Speaker 2** And this is for people who don't have a good grasp of emptiness so much. **Speaker 2** Like he said in the verse, those who haven't yet been able to perceive suchness. **Speaker 2** Nara Yoga is really good for, we did it a little bit in the beginning of the class in the meditation, **Speaker 2** and you notice it's really good for deepening your concentration. **Speaker 2** I don't know if you've noticed, but if you do it for a long time, **Speaker 2** if you try it for like a month, where you stop and you just sit and you focus on the sounds, **Speaker 2** and then you start focusing on subtler and subtler sounds, **Speaker 2** and it gets you into this really deep place of stillness very quickly. **Speaker 2** So it's very good for you, for people who are new to meditation, **Speaker 2** if you want to get to a deeper meditation level very quickly, **Speaker 2** And Nata Yoga is a good method, especially, you know, right before you start meditating on emptiness, **Speaker 2** you go and listen to the sounds first, and your mind gets into this really still, deep place. **Speaker 2** Also, sounds, as we were talking about in the meditation a little bit, are completely impermanent. **Speaker 2** You know, like you hear, you press a button and you play a piece of music, **Speaker 2** and you can rewind it and then press it again and replay it as many times as you want, **Speaker 2** but you will never be able to hold the music. **Speaker 2** You will never be able to fix the music. **Speaker 2** You will never be able to hold even one single note, **Speaker 2** because the notes always leave. **Speaker 2** You know, it's always like it's gone before you can hold on to it. **Speaker 2** Right? **Speaker 2** The music just grows. **Speaker 2** And it's beautiful the way that that happens. **Speaker 2** The way that as soon as you hear something, it's gone. **Speaker 2** It's like by the time it reaches your ears, it's already gone. **Speaker 2** The music is played and by the time it reaches your ears, it's already gone. **Speaker 2** And to tell you the truth, that's exactly how it is with every single thing that we ever perceive. **Speaker 2** We just don't see it that way. **Speaker 2** So if you start to focus on the impermanence of sound itself, **Speaker 2** and you start to see how everything is like music, **Speaker 2** you'll start to see that your experience, for instance, of your own body is the same way. **Speaker 2** You're having constantly shifting mental images of your... **Speaker 2** Like, you can sit and say, okay, my body is a still and solid thing, **Speaker 2** But if you really actually stopped and thought about your perception of your own body, **Speaker 2** you're having moment-to-moment perceptions, **Speaker 2** like I can focus on my hand, and then I can focus on my shoulder, **Speaker 2** and then I can focus on my knee, and then I can focus on... **Speaker 2** And you can't focus on more than one part at one time. **Speaker 2** And you're just having moments of perception of different parts **Speaker 2** that you label then your body. **Speaker 2** But by the time you focus on it, then your mind is on to something else. **Speaker 2** And it's the same. It's just like music. **Speaker 2** Like your entire life is this constantly shifting perception just like music. **Speaker 2** Nothing is ever the same. **Speaker 2** It's like a river, you know? **Speaker 2** It's like you can go to the Gandhi's River every day, Varanasi, **Speaker 2** but do you ever touch the same water twice? **Speaker 2** No, the water that you touched yesterday is way downstream. **Speaker 2** way, way downstream, and then you reach a different water the next time you go. **Speaker 2** And life is like that. **Speaker 2** You know, it's flowing like this river. **Speaker 2** Like every single second, different perceptions, flowing like a river. **Speaker 2** And you want to fix things. **Speaker 2** You want to fix things because it makes you nervous that it flows like a river **Speaker 2** because you can't grasp onto it. **Speaker 2** You can't grasp onto anything. **Speaker 2** It's like that. Life is like that. **Speaker 2** It just flows by you. **Speaker 2** And so when you meditate on sound, this is the kind of subtle impermanence that you start to understand about life itself. **Speaker 2** And that's one of the reasons for Nata Yoga. **Speaker 2** And it leads you into a deeper understanding of emptiness. **Speaker 2** Now, is the understanding of subtle impermanence emptiness itself? No. **Speaker 2** It's a step before that. **Speaker 2** But it's a very big step before that. **Speaker 2** if you actually went very deeply into understanding that kind of subtle and permanent, **Speaker 2** you would be very, very close to emptiness. **Speaker 2** So this is how this version of Nara Yoga brings you to emptiness. **Speaker 2** So, we had, we were trying to get Yeshe Thunman here, **Speaker 2** who is like this really, really famous Tibetan doctor. **Speaker 2** And unfortunately he couldn't come, but he sent a gift to us yesterday. **Speaker 2** And we thought it was a sign because we were teaching Nani Yoga the next day. **Speaker 2** This great, great singing bowl. **Speaker 2** Alright, so we're going to do a little Nani Yoga experiment with Yessi Dunn's singing bowl. **Speaker 2** And this, sometimes this is used for certain tantric impairments as well. **Speaker 2** So this is a, it's a really, it's a really ancient way of teaching a certain metaphor about emptiness. **Speaker 2** So you guys are all going to close your eyes, and then I'm going to ring the gong, **Speaker 2** And you're going to listen to the sound. **Speaker 2** And you're going to listen to how the sound simply fades into emptiness. **Speaker 2** Okay. **Speaker 2** Ready? **Speaker 2** Everybody have their eyes. **Speaker 3** Thank you. **Speaker 3** Okay. **Speaker 2** Now, if your karma was really good, you have these really, really powerful seeds in your **Speaker 2** mind, and then, like, some Tibetan mama dragged you into a room, and he just stared at you, **Speaker 2** and then he just rang this gong. **Speaker 2** then your mind would go directly into nothingness, right? **Speaker 2** You'd hear the sounds, **Speaker 2** and then you'd hear the sounds start to fade away into nothingness, **Speaker 2** and you would compare that sound fading away to nothingness. **Speaker 2** It would trigger something in your mind. **Speaker 2** Like, it would become a metaphor for emptiness in your mind. **Speaker 2** Now, does this happen to everyone? **Speaker 2** No. **Speaker 2** So that's one of the problems with Nadi Yoga. **Speaker 2** Like, you can sit and listen to the gong for a really long time and nothing can happen. **Speaker 2** Or you can sit and listen to sounds and then forget to apply that to emptiness. **Speaker 2** And then it doesn't mean anything, right? **Speaker 2** So we say in our tradition that this particular meditation, **Speaker 2** it's a nice way to get to stillness. **Speaker 2** It's a nice preliminary to Maha Mudra, and it's a good comparison. **Speaker 2** It gets you into a state of subtle impermanence. **Speaker 2** But for getting to emptiness itself, **Speaker 2** Maha Mudra meditation we would consider higher than that. **Speaker 2** for those people who can understand a Mahamadar meditation. **Speaker 2** Which is everybody in this room. **Speaker 2** You guys are all meditating really, really nicely, by the way. **Speaker 2** It's such a pleasure. **Speaker 2** Then there's a higher practice of Nadi Yoga **Speaker 2** where you actually start to go inside your own inner channels **Speaker 2** and you start to listen to the inner sound like a song within your central channel. **Speaker 2** And that's a very, very high tantric practice of inner body. **Speaker 2** And that's a different thing. **Speaker 2** And that serves to open up your central channel so that you can see emptiness directly. **Speaker 2** In some ways, you know, everybody's drawn to different kinds of general practices. **Speaker 2** And in some ways, Nadi Yoga reminds me of Bhakti Yoga. **Speaker 2** You know, and like because there's a kind of, in order to have your central Tiena singing inside of you, you have to have a kind of joy. **Speaker 2** There has to be a joy inside your heart. **Speaker 2** So people who are naturally very boxy-oriented and they have, like, lots of love and lots of joy, **Speaker 2** like, you can, you know, they're the ones that will be able to hear the central channel singing within them. **Speaker 2** For, you know, the rest of the people who are, like, more intellectually oriented, **Speaker 2** you know, if you could sit there and you'd be like, I don't hear anything. **Speaker 2** I really don't hear anything. **Speaker 2** You know, it's like, you've got to get the joy first, you know. **Speaker 2** you've got to get something singing inside of you, and then you can hear it singing inside **Speaker 2** of you. But it's a sweet practice. It's a very sweet practice, and we don't have so **Speaker 2** much time to explore it here. It's really, it's the kind of practice that you have to **Speaker 2** do at home, because you cannot be in a room full of a lot of outer sounds and a lot of **Speaker 2** outer distractions, because you have to be in a really, really deep, quiet place inside **Speaker 2** of you, where you can actually hear a song inside. You know, you're not focused outside **Speaker 2** anymore. You're focused inside. But try it. Try it. **Speaker 1** Which reminds me that I should mention, we won't get to all ten readings that we have planned in the next half... ten minutes. **Speaker 1** So, but we have finished them. We finished them this afternoon. We were up until 3am every night, last two weeks. And we finished it this afternoon. And then the crew, which I think we should do. Yeah. Just people help get the meetings out. **Speaker 2** Nicole, right? **Speaker 2** Everybody give a big hand to Nicole. **Speaker 2** We're totally confusing poor Lama Kimberly **Speaker 2** because it's not the thank you time, **Speaker 2** but we're thanking them anyway. **Speaker 2** and um **Speaker 2** we're doing it later **Speaker 2** well you get to do it **Speaker 2** we're doing it **Speaker 2** we're doing it later **Speaker 1** we'll do it later **Speaker 1** people worked really hard **Speaker 1** but it's finished **Speaker 1** so you'll get all 10 meetings **Speaker 1** yeah **Speaker 1** and then you'll get **Speaker 1** you'll get a note **Speaker 1** from ACI about what you have to do **Speaker 1** on the 1910th hour **Speaker 1** I'm sorry. **Speaker 1** I didn't get popcorn yet. **Speaker 1** I get to talk. **Speaker 1** You know, who says it's not a yoga? **Speaker 1** It's yoga of hindered sounds. **Speaker 1** Who says it's so wonderful? **Speaker 1** Where did it come from? **Speaker 1** And it comes from a yogi named Gauraksha. **Speaker 1** Say Gauraksha. **Speaker 1** So he's very famous, **Speaker 1** and he's very good because **Speaker 1** he was famous **Speaker 1** from Bengal to Afghanistan. **Speaker 1** I mean, that's, he traveled. **Speaker 1** He toured a lot **Speaker 1** by walking, **Speaker 1** okay, a thousand years ago. **Speaker 1** More than, about 1200 years ago. **Speaker 1** And he is known. **Speaker 1** There's a wide **Speaker 1** band of yoga **Speaker 1** across **Speaker 1** the northern half, the whole **Speaker 1** northern part of India, into Afghanistan. **Speaker 1** And he traveled **Speaker 1** and he taught people. **Speaker 1** And it's a very beautiful lineage. And you are part of that lineage. **Speaker 1** So people ask you, "What's your yoga lineage?" **Speaker 1** I'm Naropa, and Nikula, and Gauraksha. **Speaker 1** Gauraksha's teachings came into Japan. **Speaker 1** And they're found in the Tengra, which is the canon, the Buddhist canon. **Speaker 1** So he's a shared teacher by all Hindus and Buddhists. **Speaker 1** So he's a pure lineage. **Speaker 1** He's just like the all-time greatest, coolest yogi. **Speaker 1** He wrote a text called "Gharaksha Shataka" which is the 100 verses of Gharaksha. **Speaker 1** And I think somebody will try to study that. It's very, very, very beautiful. **Speaker 1** He's a very intense yogi. I wanted to read a little piece from the Tendra by Gharaksha. **Speaker 1** This doesn't exist in Sanskrit anymore. It was translated in Tibetan 12 centuries ago and then lost in India. **Speaker 1** It's just a little poem that he wrote. If you got it in the first Atheologopithecus class, **Speaker 1** then I'm going to repeat it. This is called "The Emptiness of the Inner Wind." **Speaker 1** This is a book that's in the came year. I brought it down to my teacher. **Speaker 1** My name, Gauraksha, means the cowherd, and a cowherd cares for his cows. **Speaker 1** Cares for them. Go means cow, right? And Govinda, like that. Gauraksha means the cowherder. **Speaker 1** cares for his cow, cares for them, and keeps them from ever drifting apart. **Speaker 1** They keep sun and moon from drifting apart, mixing them in a single song. **Speaker 1** For Garakshaya is Rahula, wondrous he devours the sun. **Speaker 1** A yogi who chains them tied to the backbone flies in one instrument in the realm of reality, **Speaker 1** indestructible that they come in crystalline like light, **Speaker 1** a being of emptiness clear as diamond itself. **Speaker 1** They keep sun and moon from drifting apart, fixing them in a single song. **Speaker 1** For Gauraksha, his rakula, wonders he devours the sun. **Speaker 1** So who is, what is he talking about? **Speaker 1** Go means cow, Raksha means keeper or protector, right? **Speaker 1** In Tibetan they call him Bakkyong, say Bakkyong. **Speaker 1** So Ba means cow in Tibetan, and Kyong means protector. **Speaker 1** It's not that he was taking care of cows. **Speaker 1** He was taking care of the sun and moon. **Speaker 1** And it wasn't that he was watching that the cows watered away. **Speaker 1** He was watching to see that his left and right channels didn't get out of control. **Speaker 1** You see? **Speaker 1** Why? **Speaker 1** Because he's Rahula. **Speaker 1** Who's Rahula? **Speaker 1** Rahula is the dark planet. **Speaker 1** And when there's an eclipse of the sun and the moon, **Speaker 1** In ancient Asia they believed that this dark planet was moving across the face of the moon and the sun. **Speaker 1** And you couldn't see it because it was all black. **Speaker 1** The planet was black. **Speaker 1** But when it moved across the sun you could see it. **Speaker 1** So then that Rahula was like a monster that ate the light and the sun. **Speaker 1** So, and the moon. **Speaker 1** So, yeah, it's a word for the central channel. **Speaker 1** So, so, go rakshaya is saying, I'm Rahula. **Speaker 1** What's that mean? **Speaker 1** I eat the sun and the moon. **Speaker 1** Who's the sun and the moon? Your two side channels. **Speaker 1** What runs in the two side channels? Anger, desire. **Speaker 1** Both of them running on one. **Speaker 1** Misunderstanding your world. Misunderstanding your world. **Speaker 1** I think it comes from the other side. It can't be coming from me. **Speaker 1** So what does Rahula do? He like wipes them out. He like destroys them. **Speaker 1** The whole point of Hatha Yoga, the whole point of Raja Yoga, **Speaker 1** The whole point of every form of yoga in the world is to get the wind out of the two side channels and into the central channel. **Speaker 1** Which is even given the name of Rahu, because he eats the sun in the moon. Right? **Speaker 1** So it's beautiful, it's mainly meaningful. That's why he's Guraksha. I love Guraksha. His poetry is unbelievable. **Speaker 1** We'll try to do more. **Speaker 1** It's just extraordinary. **Speaker 1** And he's your lineage, Father. **Speaker 1** You can't be proud. **Speaker 2** We'll do one last thing **Speaker 2** in the class. **Speaker 2** I just think this verse is really sweet. **Speaker 2** It's verse 64. **Speaker 2** I bow to you, Sunray Channel. **Speaker 2** I bow to you, serpent power, I bow to you, pure nectar child of the moon. **Speaker 2** I bow to you, mind beyond the mind. **Speaker 2** I bow to you, great power of the woman, being of the mind itself. **Speaker 2** It's kind of odd in a way that Master Swatma Rama would be bowing down to some inanimate objects. **Speaker 2** In a way, right? **Speaker 2** Bowing down to the powers in his own body. **Speaker 2** You can see how the ancient yogis started to personify the central channel. **Speaker 2** calling her the Mahasakti or Kundalini, **Speaker 2** this great feminine power that rises up within. **Speaker 2** Because as the winds and channels and drops start to open, **Speaker 2** the winds start to flow, **Speaker 2** and the drops start to purify themselves in your body, **Speaker 2** then amazing things start to happen to you inside your body, **Speaker 2** inside your mind, **Speaker 2** And you become so almost in awe of it. **Speaker 2** Like it's an awe that happens. **Speaker 2** Like this wasn't the body I used to know. **Speaker 2** It's a different body. **Speaker 2** Something's happening to me. **Speaker 2** And you feel so grateful. **Speaker 2** Like that you're willing to bow down to your own central channel. **Speaker 2** Like thank you so much for giving me this realization of emptiness today. **Speaker 2** Thank you so much. **Speaker 2** And that sense of gratitude kind of perpetuates itself because the more grateful you are, the more amazing things start to happen. **Speaker 2** But also there's this beautiful sense that the things in your own body are happening because of your holy teacher. **Speaker 2** That your Holy Teacher has actually come and blessed your channels and blessed your winds, **Speaker 2** and they are now moving within you. **Speaker 2** And so as you start to practice and something starts to happen, **Speaker 2** it's like they manifest within you as your own central channel. **Speaker 2** They're like living inside you. **Speaker 2** And, you know, if your holiday teacher is enlightened, then they can manifest as anything they want. **Speaker 2** You know, they manifest as the person next to you on the subway. **Speaker 2** They manifest as the subway itself. **Speaker 2** They manifest as the wind. **Speaker 2** They manifest, you know, anything. **Speaker 2** Anything at all. **Speaker 2** They manifest as something beautiful as you walk by to bring you joy. **Speaker 2** It manifests as something sad as you walk by to remind you of why you're really practicing. **Speaker 2** It can manifest everywhere, as anything. **Speaker 2** But it can manifest inside you, in your own body. **Speaker 2** That's sort of wild. **Speaker 2** that you can carry your holy teachers within you wherever you go, **Speaker 2** and that they can be constantly teaching you, inside of you, **Speaker 2** and that they can be bringing you light with every breath. **Speaker 2** That's one of the holiest thoughts that you can think. **Speaker 1** I'll just note that we'd like to donate **Speaker 1** God to this rituals **Speaker 1** where's this rituals? **Speaker 1** yeah **Speaker 1** And we'd like to have to play it once in a while there. **Speaker 1** And then, yeah. **Speaker 1** And they're looking for yoga teachers, okay? **Speaker 1** So if you teach yoga and you have time, they would love to have you teach there. **Speaker 1** They would like to have more yoga teachers there. **Speaker 1** Even if you're just starting to teach, they'd like to have you. **Speaker 1** Okay. **Speaker 1** Thank you.