Tibetan Meditation
Instructions
by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
FIRST, LOOK TO your posture: arrange
the legs in the most comfortable position; set the backbone as straight as an
arrow. Place your hands in the position of meditative equipoise, four finger
widths below the navel, with the left hand on the bottom, right hand on top,
and your thumbs touching to form a triangle. This placement of the hands has
connection with the place inside the body where inner heat is generated.
Bending the neck down slightly, allow the mouth and teeth to be as usual, with
the top of the tongue touching the roof of the mouth near the top teeth. Let
the eyes gaze downwards loosely—it is not necessary that they be directed to
the end of the nose; they can be pointed toward the floor in front of you if
this seems more natural. Do not open the eyes too wide nor forcefully close
them; leave them open a little. Sometimes they will close of their own accord;
that is all right. Even if your eyes are open, when your
mental consciousness becomes steady on its object, these appearances to the eye
consciousness will not disturb you.
For those of you who wear eyeglasses, have you noticed that when you take off
your glasses, because of the unclarity there is less
danger from the generation of excitement and more danger of laxity? Do you find
that there is a difference between facing and not facing the wall? When you
face the wall, you may find that there is less danger of excitement or
scattering. These kinds of things can be determined through your own
experience. . . .
TRY TO LEAVE YOUR mind vividly in a natural state, without thinking of what
happened in the past or of what you are planning for the future, without
generating any conceptuality. Where does it seem that your consciousness is? Is
it with the eyes or where is it? Most likely you have a sense that it is
associated with the eyes since we derive most of our awareness of the world
through vision. This is due to having relied too much on our sense
consciousness. However, the existence of a separate mental consciousness can be
ascertained; for example, when attention is diverted by sound, that which
appears to the eye consciousness is not noticed. This indicates that a separate
mental consciousness is paying more attention to sound heard by the ear
consciousness than to the perceptions of the eye consciousness.
With persistent practice, consciousness may eventually be perceived or felt as
an entity of mere luminosity and knowing, to which anything is capable of
appearing and which, when appropriate conditions arise, can be generated in the
image of whatsoever object. As long as the mind does not encounter the external
circumstance of conceptuality, it will abide empty without anything appearing
in it, like clear water. Its very entity is that of mere experience. Let the
mind flow of its own accord without conceptual overlay. Let the mind rest in
its natural state, and observe it. In the beginning, when you are not used to
this practice, it is quite difficult, but in time the mind appears like clear
water. Then, stay with this unfabricated mind without
allowing conceptions to be generated. In realizing this nature of the mind, we
have for the first time located the object of observation of this internal type
of meditation.
The best time for practicing this form of meditation is in the morning, in a
quiet place, when the mind is very clear and alert. It helps not
to have eaten too much the night before nor to sleep too much; this makes
the mind lighter and sharper the next morning. Gradually the mind will become
more and more stable; mindfulness and memory will become clearer.