In Love with the World
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: Hello friends. My name’s Tami Simon, and I’m the founder of Sounds True. I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge. In this special episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, a beloved Tibetan teacher and master of the Karma Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. Mingyur has a special ability to communicate the depth of his realization in a way that’s contemporary and broadly accessible. He’s written five books and oversees the Tergar Meditation Community, an international network of Buddhist meditation centers.
This conversation originally aired on Sounds True One, Sounds True’s membership platform that airs monthly specials, dialogues, Transformation Labs, and weekly live Community Meditation Sessions. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
This conversation with Mingyur was part of a special month on Sounds True, one where we focused on pain as a doorway that can lead us to greater compassion for others. Here, Rinpoche explores his harrowing near-death experience and the life-giving discoveries and spiritual realizations that came with it, a journey that he describes in the beautiful book In Love with the World. And now here’s a deep and illuminating conversation with Mingyur.
I’m so excited for this. Welcome.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche: Hello. Thank you. Thank you very much and very happy to be here.
TS: To begin, you share a teaching In Love with the World about your inspiration to go on a wandering retreat, you call it adding wood to the fire. Share with us a little bit what this means, adding wood to the fire and why you wanted to go on this wandering retreat.
YM: Yes. So we have this tradition wandering retreat, which is a little bit like example of how to make the fire. First when we make the fire with the right condition, protective area with a small wood or maybe even grass, and then fire become bigger and you can open more wind, then you add more woods, even the huge wood actually it helps for the fire. So adding wood to the fire. So that means after a certain level, obstacles become opportunity, problems become solution and poison become medicine. So this is the traditional style that making friends with everything that come to your life, what we call life is up and down like wave of the ocean. But the most important is how we are taking this up and down as learning and growing and to transform ourself. That is the key important thing. If we are taking up and down as kind of negative way, then up down really hurt us, impact us, and then we feel maybe anxiety, depressed, even lonely, lot or hate, anger. So many things can come, but if you’re taking this up and down, it’s wonderful. But sometime we learn more, we grow more, we transform more. So that’s the way adding wood to the fire, the traditional meaning.
TS: I want to ask a little bit more about that because I noticed that when people have this kind of mindset that they take obstacles as opportunities. I respect that so much and yet it can be hard. I notice a lot of times when obstacles emerge, I don’t see them as opportunities. I see them as things that are getting in my way and I resent them or I complain. I certainly complain about them. So what can you say to help those of us who aspire to that but aren’t currently living it at the level we would like?
YM: Yeah, of course it’s very difficult, easy to set than done. Yeah, normally we have this phrase, it’s very difficult but it is possible. So in my life, since when I was 13, I had the panic attacks when I was eight, nine years old. Then I learned meditation when I was nine years old and then the panic is very severe. But I tried to take friends with my panic attacks. I learned meditation from my father, but I’m very lazy, lazy boy. It took me five years to make friends, but actually when I make friends with a panic, I feel like I really believe this obstacle become opportunity, poison become medicine. But in order to do that, we need to have out of box thinking. If you’re still in the box, then I think you cannot go through, for example, one of my father’s important advice that if you are going somewhere and you reach the dead end, there’s a huge wall in front of you. What should we do? If you are thinking everything’s a possible obstacle is opportunity. I can go through and you bang your head to the wall. I can go through, you cannot go through and what happened, it will hurt your forehead and what we call you will have potato.
No matter how you try, you bang your head to the wall. Impossible maybe. So we need to accept that one. Most people don’t know how to accept that one. They think everything is possible, meaning can go through the wall banging head on the wall, but it doesn’t mean you cannot go the other side of the wall. There’s so many different ways. Maybe you can look right and left, bring stake just you in a few steps and then put the other side you cross or maybe rope or maybe rock climbing style or maybe detour, maybe go underway. So many different ways. What we call live is impermanence, is changing like wave of the ocean. We need to accept that. Once we accept that, then we will see new door, new possibility, potential opportunity. In the end you can cross the wall.
TS: Now you said that as a young person you had panic attacks and you discovered over a five-year period how to befriend them. What did you discover about this befriending?
YM: So I developed at the beginning very strong resistant. I have this fear and then my heart bumps like drum and then tight around my neck. I cannot breathe. And then the ground is shaking almost like you’re in an airplane and the airplane passing through the turbulence. So then I try my best to fight with my panic. I run, I hike the mountain When I reach the top of the mountain, panic come there, I go into the forest play with my friends and I check with the doctor also. I thought it’s heart attack and the doctor said, your heart is very good. I don’t believe doctor.
And then when I was nine, I discussed this with my mom. My mom said, you should learn meditation from my father. So I learned, I’m very shy to ask him, but my mom asked on behalf of me and he was very happy. And then my first question to my father is how I can fight with my panic attacks? And he said, don’t fight. And I was surprised what? And he said, don’t fight why you don’t need to fight. There is wonderful nature, wonderful quality within us, which is beyond panic. It’s the basis of the panic attacks. And he give me an example that our fundamental quality is like sky. I was born in the Himalaya mountain. We have beautiful sky, but sky is not always beautiful. We have thunderstorm storm. So these storms are like panic attacks and no matter how strong they are, these storms cannot change nature of sky.
He asked me, will the storm can change in nature of sky? And I thought a lot in the end I said no. So what is this wonderful nature, what we call awareness, love and compassion and the wisdom. And these three things are together, inseparable, quality of our own mind, fundamental quality of the mind. So the meditation is not try to get rid of the cloud or storm, but just try to connect with the inner sky, how to connect with the inner sky through cloud. So sometimes sky in the space cannot not intangible, not easy to see it, but when we see the cloud, oh there is sky, there is space. We can see the space of sky through the cloud. So making everything as Fran by making friend, we can connect through the making friend, we can connect with the inner sky.
TS: Very helpful. Now you decide at 36 to intensify hardship for yourself, to make trouble for yourself, to add wood to the fire by going on this wandering retreat. And one of the things that impressed me with In Love with the World reading this account is you were willing to be very forthcoming at the beginning about your complaints, about how difficult it was. Here’s a privileged toku, you’d always had an attendant by your side, people taking care of you, traveling in first class, et cetera. And now suddenly you’re in a completely different situation that is very, very challenging. Sleeping on a train station floor, the smells, the sounds. But what impressed me Mingyur was that you were willing to share that this was really hard for you and that you were really upset by it and that it forced you to work with your upset. So I wanted to ask you about this willingness to talk about your own challenges.
YM: Yes. So this wondering Richard style, I really inspire from the childhood because every time my mom read these great yogis in the Tibet like Melba and Ro Samo, there’s some female yogis also this life story is really, really touching and I really want to do like that, but of course I don’t have that capacity. But then I finished three year retreat, all the teachings and when I was 36 I thought maybe I’m ready now. But as you mentioned, sometime I call myself, it’s like Barama prince, I have this name Ku, very high level of kind of title teacher. Wherever I go people really respect them and everywhere and then many attendance and nice bed, I got all this. So I never bake food in my life before that, even one time I know it’s very difficult, but I thought I’ll do this. This is my really wanting to do.
So then one day I left my monastery in India with Gaia in the middle of the night and I don’t have much money, a few thousand Indian rues and then just left, no friend, no attendant, no place to live, just took the train and then I arrived. My destination is overnight train Azi from Aya, the place called Azi. And no, it took off. I slept on the train station for a few days and one thing in the train I have a lot of emotion comes because I thought I finished this three year retreat, I make friends with my panic attacks. I thought I’m better than this.
But very funny that this disturbance are not because of no where to go or no home, but it’s just embarrassed. I’m on the ground and there’s a lot of local Indians there and I feel like everybody’s looking at me and there’s a police there or there also looking at me and then I have a lot of kind of emotion comes. So that’s the quite challenge. But I didn’t give up and then I continued go to another place. Then after that I finished all my money. I have to beg the food first time in my life. So I thought there’s one kind of street restaurant, tiny restaurant. When I have some money I buy food from there. It’s not expensive. When I finish all my money I thought I’m going to back from them because I know them, it’s no stranger. And they give me lap of food in the evening and that lt over foot become like foot poison, I have died, almost die.
TS: And we’re going to talk about that experience of almost dying because it really forms the core of the story In Love with the World and your discoveries from really a type of interesting near death experience that you went through. But before we get there, I want to ask you just one more question about this forthcomingness, about you said your embarrassment because you write in the old days when I was a young monk, I berated myself quite regularly for any discrepancies between some ideal version of practice and what I was actually able to do. But then you didn’t berate yourself. You had a way of accepting your difficulties and your embarrassment. And I want to ask you about that because I think a lot of us have a disappointment. I read these great inspiring books and then this is how I actually am in my life and then on top of it I feel disappointed in myself. I’m upset with myself, I berate myself. But it sounds like you had a way of working through that. Were you accepted right where you were? So that’s what I want to hear more about.
YM: Yes, so what we call normally anything what we do special when we think is important or matters to me, and this always have this blame, some kind of self-judgment or self blame or kind of critical about ourself. So that is what we call the one of the causes of when I was young I had panic attacks. That’s one of the causes that I really want to get rid of. My panic attacks, I feel like this is a kind of obstacle for my life, getting my life away and taking all my happiness from me and I feel like this is a part of me and then that is really become like loop. But then what I discover is it’s okay, it’s another storm. We all have good days and bad days. The sky always blue without cloud, always sun shining may not be good, maybe one or few days good, but sometime clouds good, sometime rain is good, sometime there’s some stone.
It’s okay, it’s this nature, but whatever this happens, it’ll not impact the fundamental quality of us. There is wonderful quality within ourself. Even that subcritical thinking, even that guilt and judgment is coming from awareness. It is a manifestation of love and compassion. So lose that is a poison, but actually what we call when we look at the wave, if we don’t know that it’s a wave, we think like it’s a landslide, but actually it’s just water. The nature of the wave is water. So when we see it, and of course we have this, a lot of technique teachings, seeing even that negative or disturbing or strong emotion, the essence of that, there’s awareness, love and compassion and the wisdom. Once you discover that you don’t need to fight with them, you don’t need to get rid of them, they automatically transform and it’s okay, everybody has a mistake. Nobody is always perfect. In the tbe we have one saying that no mistake, no success. So there’s a part of that, but important is learn from the mistake. Grow from the mistake.
TS: Back to your wandering story here you are begging for the first time getting leftovers and you develop food poisoning. And at a certain point, at first you think you just have a stomach bug or something and it’s going to pass. But at a certain point you realize, oh, this could actually be really serious. I might even be dying. This stomach illness is so severe and you have a decision point which is do I reach out for help? Because of course if you did, you would be able to get word to someone and the helicopter would come in or some version of that and you would be rescued, do I reach out for help or not? And I’d love to know more if you put that decision under a magnifying glass for you and then how you made your way to clarity around that.
YM: So after I eating the food, so I eat food in the evening, then after one hour later there’s somebody, there’s a lot of noise. Then in that night in the midnight I need to run into the, there’s not really woods, a lot of plants and there’s not really toilet there, it’s just outside. And then when I go there to do my business or the dogs chasing after me, there’s a lot of street dogs. In the daytime we are friends. By nighttime we have become enemies. But then next day I thought, oh, it will go away. I meditate a little bit about impermanence, it’s coming and going, oh course it’s impermanent, but continue.
And then after few days later, because I don’t have food to eat, I only drink the water. There’s a palm, well which is I have to palm like this and then water comes when I try to reach water, then water is already stopped. So I have to run very fast. I drink that water again and again in the days, five, six later, then it’s vomiting, diarrhea, getting worse, not getting better and my body losing the strength. It’s like now I cannot really sit straight. Also it’s like collapsing. And I thought okay, maybe I’m going to die here. What should I do? Should I go back or continue to stay like that? And if I go back, maybe I can try to find phone of my monastery. I remember the phone number, maybe try to call or should I do I have a little bit of feeling of panic for a few hours, maybe one or two hours, panic come.
But then after that I decided this is a very, very bold and strong movement. I mean the decision normally I’m telling other people don’t try like that. Don’t try at your home. So I decided to stay actually. So there’s a practice, what we call if I live, it’s good, please bless me to be courage to live long. If I die good, please bless me to have courage to die. So I pray this few times and then just let it be that fear is gone. I mean the anxiety, the panic is gone. And now I’m prepared almost like dying and we have this death and dying meditation and I practice this death and dying meditation in the midnight already. And then slowly, slowly my sense are dissolving. I cannot see, I cannot hear and the body become paralyzed. Then I have this inner what we call dissolution experience. Everything dissolve, but then I maintain in the awareness, the meditation, we have this awareness meditation, but eventually awareness become more clear, more clear, more clear. And then I don’t have even body sensation. I think all the other senses are collapse, but the awareness is really present and nor from nor back, no time. And it’s really opening. It’s kind of become vast and also the direction nor far no close.
So wonderful experience. So I stay in that few maybe six, seven, maybe around eight hours later. Then in the end I feel like, oh, maybe it’s not the time to die. There’s something kind of like something’s not the time for me. There’s some kind of compassion but no word. The normal words are gone. Normally we have this image, word is gone. So kind of non-conceptual level of feeling, compassion and that becomes stronger. Stronger. Then I felt my body. And first I hear something. There’s so many noise. Normally we don’t hear nature kind of sound slowly, slowly can hear. And then it’s in the morning. So I can slowly, slowly open, try to move my fingers and I look around. Now the environment where I stayed before is I feel like unsafe. Lot of dogs behind me. There’s a broken wall and why I’m here now, that feeling of unsafe is completely gone. That street, the dirty street become like my home and the tree in front of me is so beautiful, what I call the tree of love. And when the wind touched to my face, it’s all blissful and so much appreciation, gratitude, the street become like my home.
TS: And then what happens?
YM: So then I thought, okay, I feel thirsty. I want to drink that palm water again. So I get up, I can get up now kind of like body become quite light, not much strength but light. And I try to walk few steps to the palm, well and suddenly become unconscious I think. And then when I wake up, somebody took me in the hospital, I met one Asian guy and few days before and I think he took me into the hospital and there’s an IV when I wake up as IB and I’m on the plastic iron plastic bed which is little bit moving and I look around and this Asian guy said, you almost die. And I took and then something to drink like salt and sweet together. And a few hours later I feel quite good and I want to go out of hospital. Doctor said you should stay one day. I said I’m good. And finally doctor said you can go and come back. But I went outside of hospital. I didn’t come back.
TS: Now Mingyur, let’s go back to the dying experience that you were having where you talked about the dissolution that was occurring and how you used your Tibetan training, the practices you had learned during that period. One of the things that In Love with the World you share is that you engaged in the practice of offerings at this time. And I thought that’s such a beautiful practice and something that we could do really throughout any time in our life. And I wonder if you can share that particular practice you did.
YM: Yes. So we have this death and dying meditation. So what we call ou practice, OU meaning in between. So normally in our life we all have this bubble, we have our own cocoon. And to go out of that bubble, it’s very difficult in between moment is the up and down moment of the life. So when you are 18-year-old, moving away from home, big part when you’re looking for a new job, also gap. When you lost your job, very good. I’m not saying losing job is good, but the gap, the part when you start new relationship, there’s a gap when you break up. Also a gap and special. When we go to sleep, we have the dissolution experience. So what we call sleeping and the dying very similar, but the lib is very short and unclear. When we are really dying, so clear in long time, other was no difference.
So we drew this bardo practice. So bardo practice is mainly to understand this dissolution state to recognize and then rest in the awareness, maintain special what we call open awareness or objectless awareness. Awareness without focus. Any object like candle, lamp illuminate itself. Our mind is illuminating itself always, but we are not recognized that. So recognize that and rest in that. So what are the dissolution? So for element like first we feel like falling or dismantle earth element. Then we feel like melting water element floating or melting. Then we feel like burning and shock and then in the end blow away. So the shock is fire, blown away is the wind. For example, if you have a breakup, first you feel shock and falling, collapsing, then you feel like floating. Then a lot of nervous and then in the end dark. So these are the dissolution normally. And then actually what happened is as we are experiencing this dissolution, the fundamental quality of our mind, the awareness is actually become more present, more open. And now there’s a lot of opportunity that you can transform sometime what I call plasticity moment.
But we need to recognize that we need to first recognize that is the moment that we can transform and bring awareness. So we do that when we go to sleep. Also, when we go to sleep first we feel falling, then we feel floating, then we feel shock a little bit. And then most people don’t feel that in the end but blown away and dark. And then after that we feel very present and so awake but without concept one or two seconds we experience that. That is the ground luminosity, what we call the fundamental quality of the mind. If you can rest with that, an entire sleep become meditation. For example, if you are taking nap, maybe you’re in the meeting, boring meeting and oh yeah, this is a good idea and then you almost fall asleep, not really completely fall asleep, almost fall asleep and then wake up.
So when you wake up in that moment, mine is so present, clear, fresh. So most people experience that why in that moment we go into the ground, luminosity baby version of ground luminosity. But when we die that luminosity becomes so vivid, present clear. So I experienced that. So as you said, the offering is normally there are four steps of practice before dying and we do that imagination level. Now also we can do that during sleeping also. And of course the big what we call the big day, the last day of our life, big day we can do that. Therefore first is offering, second is the dedication, the third is the intention. Motivation last is whatever pray or practice you do the pray. So therefore the first is offering meaning when we going to die we need to let go ready to die. So if you want to wheel, make wheel also normal is quite important. Not necessary to wait until die, but you can make wheels before ahead. Then if you have anything to attach to the object, maybe friends, family, shoe to the what we call the meditators attached to maah or pray book, whole house. So I was thinking during that time I have attachment to my mom, my mother and I offer my mom, my teacher, my student, also my monastery, all this offer. So whatever object of attachment, maybe money, possession, anything offer, let it go.
TS: So just to clarify, this is a visualization that you’re doing, but you’re suggesting that also in the course of our everyday life we might actually offer physical objects or money or things like that or no, this is just a visualization practice that we can do.
YM: This is more like visualization practice in everyday life. We need to assume that today is the final day, the big day. And we imagine that if the big day comes, I will do similar like this and today is big day and this offer imagination level making wheels are real, but then other.
TS: So what does that mean to offer your mother in your imagination? What does that mean when you say that?
YM: So I offer my mom to what we call Buddha sangha and awareness our true natures. So that means I feel like my mom now under the care and love of Buddha, Dharma, Sangha and the fundamental quality awareness. So now I’m not worried. Something like that, right?
TS: So it’s this gift giving. Internally you’re doing this like gifting and honoring and presenting. You wrote about how you could take a favorite experience, like a part of nature or something and offer that as well.
YM: Yes, if you go outside, it’s a beautiful mountain you can appreciate and offer that too. Sky, sun, shining appreciation and offering like that. And the second practice is now what we call the dedication. So meaning you look backward to your life, whatever you did virtual, maybe helping other people, meaningful thing in your life. Maybe you meditate, maybe social work, all this virtue you appreciate about that and also happiness and appreciate about your life, appreciate about all the virtue and even not just up, even down also that is experience up and down is the life. Appreciate that and all this virtue, all this happiness again dedicate for world peace, for friends and family.
It’s kind of like offering. So number two, thanks to the life, appreciate and dedicate again. Number three now intention. So today I’m going to die. I’m going to use this opportunity to practice the bardo meditation to explore my inner sky, the wonderful quality within myself. I’m going to experience that and learn and grow until the last breath or even beyond. So that motivation to seek your true nature inspire. Not like I’m doomed and this is the worst thing. Not like that actually even death. Death and dying is a great opportunity to explore like adventure. Last is you can pray if you have any religion, you can pray there or you just pray all my friends and family world be peace, everybody be well and some kind of goodbye. And then you just rest in awareness. Awareness and then dissolution come. Then in the end we will experience this. The ground luminosity sometime what we call the mother luminosity. Everybody will experience. It doesn’t matter whether you are religious person or Buddhist, non-Buddhist, religious, non-religious, doesn’t matter. It’s everybody’s nature. And then you will rest with that. And then your death become for us what we call the death become emerged with enlightenment.
TS: What was your prayer?
YM: I pray. First I pray to all my teachers and the teaching and I pray to nature of myself and all beings. Then I pray this may all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness may all beings free from suffering and the causes of suffering. So I did these prayers.
TS: Now you mentioned that the dissolution process culminates in this meeting with ground luminosity and part of the power of In Love with the World. For me reading the book was your direct introduction to us of what you call child luminosity, meeting mother luminosity. And quite honestly, that’s something I’ve heard about before, but there was a way when you described it, I had an appreciation of it that I’d never had. And so I wonder if you can share that with our listeners, this child luminosity meeting the mother luminosity.
YM: Yes. So this is the traditional example, the child luminosity meaning right now when we practice, so maybe we understand awareness intellectually and then if we practice a little bit, a little bit, then we get some glimpse of experience. Then the third stage, what we call direct realization. So intellectual understanding, then some experience, then direct realization of the awareness. All this process, what we call child luminosity because it’s not really fully grown yet and a lot of up and down and even you meditate some days very well, some days feel worse. So this is what we call child luminosity. Child is very, very sometime laughing and then sometime crying and sometime making a lot of noise and sometimes it’s up and down. But then when we die, everything dissolves. So actually I experienced that. Of course my sensory perception, everything dissolves. Not only that, the thought also dissolves. The thought normally thought is when we think about apple and there’s an image of apple, then there’s a word apple, then there’s some sensation, apple feeling about the apple. And these three comes together. That is what we call conceptual mind. These three deserves.
But you know what is going on in that moment without having this conceptual mind? And that is what we call ground luminosity so fast. Now our mind, when we think about apple, we cannot think about orange. When we think about orange. We cannot think about apple. It’s very fast. We think, oh, we can think both because actually it’s just back and forth. But in that moment in the ground, luminosity, it’s like I give example like lake in the mountain reflects entire valley at the same time. The trees, rocks, tears, sky, cloud, house, everything can manifest. So this aspect of the mine is so fast, profound. And we have that right now, right here. We all have that. But the problem is we don’t see it. Why? We don’t see too close, too easy and then conceptual mind. So because we are whole on conceptual mind and this ground luminosity is too close, too easy, we don’t see it. But when we die we will see. So the child, meaning child has some familiarity about this ground luminosity, although it’s not so clear, but when we die, oh, like child recognizing the mom, the reunion, they become one.
TS: So you had this big day, you could say a dress rehearsal of the big day. You had a big day while still being alive and being here. How did that change you?
YM: That actually really, really changed actually. There’s no feeling of unsafe that’s gone. So my book title is In Love with the World. Why? Because what I felt like if you love the world, world loves you back after that. After that instant after I come out from hospital, actually I feel like whole world is my home. And then actually I’m become more smart. I know how to manage my time, where to find food, where to go, and even ups and downs or whatever comes really become like my friend. So rest almost more than four years is wonderful. And my practice is really, really improved my meditation practice. And normally I hear about the death and dying. I hear about the awareness cannot be die, why it’s unborn and never being born how you die. I really experience that. It’s not just belief. So the whole perspective about myself and the other world changed after that.
TS: Tell me more. This word unborn awareness, being unborn, what does that mean?
YM: So this mother luminosity is beyond concept of course beyond five senses, but it has luminous quality and that is beyond subject and object, beyond concept, beyond time. So it is not created by cause and condition, it is emptiness. Sometimes one vehicle is emptiness, but it’s not nothing. It’s emptiness, but it’s not nothing. It is like basis for everything, entire universe for us. One time I have a lot of discussion with the one of them, physics and they talk about this dark matter and dark energy. I thought, oh, quite similar. So this is the fundamental basis of our being, the core being yet beyond subject and object. But it has luminous quality. So this is why what vehicle is unborn is emptiness.
TS: And just to have you say a little bit more about this word, luminosity or luminous, I think hearing it, it sounds like there’s a quality of light, but yet it’s unborn light. So I’m curious if you could say more descriptively.
YM: So it is not the physical light, it is experience light. For example, you can see me, I can see you through the screen, you can hear my voice all is the what we call manifestation of the luminous mind. Can see, can hear, can smell, can feel. All this appearance, all this experience, all this perceptions, all this annoying is based on that luminous mind. But that lumous mind itself is beyond of everything. So it’s emptiness. Yeah.
TS: Okay. So you mentioned that this bardo state and these bardo can have all these different kinds of applications. Somebody’s going through a divorce, somebody’s lost their job. And I think a lot of people can relate to that and they can even relate to this sense of I feel like the earth has just sunk and fallen. I’m in a crevasse, everything’s falling. The sense of things kind of dissolving and liquefying and the shock of the experience and even the sense of everything seems to be moving and uncertain, but often we don’t get to this luminous space. Instead we’re in this shock movement, fear, concern. And you’ve pointed out, oh, there’s the sky, the inner sky. We can get to the inner sky, but I think it’s hard for people. I’m wondering if you can give me some more concrete pointers for someone who’s in that situation.
YM: Yeah, it’s like when we look at the ocean on the surface, we only see up and down, up and down, up and down. But if you go a little bit deep into that, there’s a calm water, clear calm water when you go to the lake. One time I went to the lake and a lot of movement and I swim inside pristine water. Look, everything’s calm. So actually it’s like that on the surface level. We have so much up and down. But the fundamental is this luminous mine. But of course sometime just intellectual level is very difficult to accept that and understand that this is why we need to learn what we call being mine. So we have two things in inquiry. Mine, like analytical mind and the being mine need to just be with the reality as. So we need to learn step by step.
Normally I teach some kind of experiential step-by-step practice in my meditation community called and we have this joy of living meditation workshops level 1, 2, 3. So first level one and level one first important is recognize awareness. So what is awareness? Awareness means you are mine actually that you know what you are thinking, feeling, doing. You can see my face, you can hear my voice. You are looking at this screen and while you’re looking at this screen, maybe you have this window here, chair there. So that knowing quality that can experience, can know, can understand, can feel. That is the awareness. And then next phase is we need to connect with that awareness through object. An object. So object can be anything. What we call, we can meditate everywhere, anytime with anything. So maybe at the beginning could be breath, could be sound, could be something that you can see, could be taste, could be tactile.
Then eventually the body, the sensation in the body then thought. Thought means positive thought, negative thought, neutral thought. And then emotion. When you reach the emotion, even the panic attacks can be object of awareness. So the funny thing is when you see even the panic attacks, actually you are out of panic attacks. For example, when you see the river, you are out of river. When you see the mountain, you are out of mountain and that coming out comes byproduct. You don’t need to make space, you don’t need to come out. But just being with that pushback, you’re free. But yet the panic becomes too supporter or reminder of the awareness. Awareness become bigger than panic attacks and actually watching or holding the panic attacks. So these step-by-step traditional techniques, once we learn that not so easy, it is doable, but of course difficult.
TS: So really what you’re saying is that for people who want to develop this capacity meditation training, that is the time tested method, a progressive series of meditation training practices like you offer at Tergar.
YM: Yes, yes. So we have these three things, the view first that the perspective then experiential meditation number three apply in everyday life application. So need these three components. Then we can transform
TS: One last point, Rinpoche to talk about together, which is this quality of confidence. And you say that confidence comes when we can have faith and trust that in the uncertainty, in that gap there will be new life, a type of regeneration. And I wonder what you can share with people to give them, to help them have that kind of confidence no matter what part of the journey they’re in right now.
YM: So in our tradition, we believe that everybody has basic innate goodness that no matter what happened to us and what kind of situation facing in our life, but this wonderful nature with us all the time. So sky is always there even though there’s a lot of cloud and storms. But important is try to connect that inner sky through the making friends with ups and downs of the life. But I’m saying that if you go somewhere and you reach the dead end huge wall, and if you’re thinking that I can go through this wall by banging my head, that is impossible, need to accept that most people sometimes stuck there. It doesn’t mean you cannot cross the wall so many different ways. Even maybe you cannot cross wall of all, but they might have another opportunity also, another possibility, another way to learn and grow. So potential possibility, opportunity always there. But whether you are pursue that or not, that’s the issue.
TS: I feel honored to be able to have had this chance to talk with you and bring your teaching to the Sounds True community. And I wonder could we end, I’m going to ask one more thing with the blessing of some kind for all of our listeners and then further out even for anyone who the molecules of this recording might touch in any way and with some kind of shared blessing together. Would that be okay?
YM: Yes. And I’m also very happy and I appreciate to have this with this program. Thank you. And through your channel helping many, many people really appreciate. And I will pray that through this conversation and all our positive effort that help society community to the world and may all things have happiness and the causes of happiness may all being free from suffering and the causes of suffering, and we all discover the luminosity. They’re right here, right now within an us.
TS: Thank you, Mingyur. Thank you so very, very much.
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