Tibetan Meditation (2) - Projections

I was going to talk about meditation on realization, but to be honest, I couldn't focus at all during the meditation.  The meditation technique itself is simple. Before meditation, ask a higher power to guide you through this exercise. Then, meditate on a simple topic. In the workshop, we meditated on the concept of "I". In your mind, ask yourself what is the true nature of "I"? Really think about it. Debate the topic in your head. According to Reema, your mind will eventually come to a conclusion. Then hold on to that conclusion until it settles with you.  This is the Lamrim meditation, designed to help you realize the wisdom that's already within you.

Reema mentioned that if we go through all the meditation techniques, meditating on love and wisdom, one will eventually reach a state of constant bliss. However, being at bliss with oneself is not enough; upon realizing all the truths the it will become unbearable for the meditator to see others suffer and will have great desire to want to help others out, until everyone is relieved of suffering.

I think this explains why some people who are really into spiritual studies and meditations have this airy fairy smile on their faces and why they have this huge desire to travel around the world and teach what they have learned even though most people don't take them seriously at all.

So why couldn't I focus during this particular meditation? She mentioned at the beginning of the workshop that one major realization we will eventually come to is emptiness. The world is actually just a blank sheet of paper.  What we see in the world are our own projections, based on our thoughts and past experiences.  I think ever since she said that, my analytical mind has been going on overdrive debating on this topic of emptiness and projections instead.  

Is the world really a blank sheet of emptiness and everything is our personal projections? I don't know. I've been hearing yeses and noes in my head the entire week (maybe I'm still under Reema's hypnosis?)

As a molecular biologist, I know that our DNA contains the instructions to construct every cell in our body.  My DNA is 99.9% identical to every other human's DNA, so of course we're all extremely similar, with minor variations in our body proportions, skin colors, metabolism speeds, IQs, health issues, personalities etc.  We seem to have different degrees of the same fallacies.  Very few people seem to be able to come up with "new" thoughts. Every time I think I've come up with a brand new profound idea, I find out that Aristotle or Socrates or Confucius or some other ancient full-time thinkers had already thought of it thousands of years ago (darn those people for stealing my million dollar ideas!!  :P )

So, in that sense, we're not really "blank", are we? We're pre-programmed beings, with built-in capabilities and potentials that can be realized with training and practice.

I guess I'm trying to figure out why I went to the meditation class to begin with
--> to relieve mental anxiety. I guess I should have just meditated on my breath to stop my mind from over-analyzing instead of meditating on realization. Oh well, too late.

So what's the source of my anxieties and sufferings? I guess I currently have two main things -- relationship with family, and trying to figure out what the heck I'm doing with my life.  I guess that's when this teaching of projections really came in handy. I don't know how many years I've been on an auto-pilot mode.  It's always the same pattern every time I have to hang out with my extended family:

1. I feel like everyone is always try to give me advice and tell me what to do for every situation - from Chinese etiquette ( "always fight for the restaurant bill") to how to park my car.
2. I keep quiet, but feel rage and annoyance build up
3. They point out more things (I should eat less sweets. My sleeve is folded funny. How old am I, 5?)
4. The annoyance builds up to a point where I stop listening to anything else they try to say to me and I look like an angry person.

Luckily I could't get the "everything you experience in the world is just your projection" idea out of my head, so I was able to back off a bit from my attachment to my emotions, and kept listening to what they were saying. Turns out when I listen to people talk with an open mind, I hear different things than when I listen while feeling angry/hurt/annoyed.  What I heard was that everyone else in my family was also suffering when others would not behave as they expected their projections of how the world should be. And oh my, their projections of the world are so wildly different from my projection, with dramatically different rules and etiquette (none are set by current law; some are even out of date with current social trends in society). When they try to tell me what to do, it's just them on autopilot mode as well, thinking I need all the guidance I can get as the youngest kid, not because they actually know everything better than I do. I have the freedom to listen and not react, and I am not required to do everything as they say.

I guess the workshop was useful after all. Maybe meditation on the "I" for 30 minutes had helped too, even though I had thought I failed to meditate at the time :)

Tibetan meditation (1)

I attended a Tibetan meditation class over the weekend because I know next to nothing about Tibet, and wondered how Tibetan lineages differed from Indian lineages of yoga, meditation, and Buddhism. I was also curious about what kind of meditation technique would make Tibetan monks the "happiest people on Earth". It appears that between the 11th and 14th centuries, the Tibetans translated most of the available Buddhist texts at the time into Tibetan. Some of the original Sanskrit Buddhist texts were subsequently lost during various wars; hence a lot of these lost works survive only in Tibetan translation. Therefore Indian Buddhism/yoga and Tibetan Buddhism/yoga essentially came from the same lineage.

Previously I tried to do some internet research about Tibetan Buddhism and got super confused about all the scandals of various Tibetan leadership figures, strange creatures worshipped by various sects, bizarre rituals of secretive Tibetan monks, and disagreements between different Tibetan sects. I'm glad this teacher was able to cut through all these complications and instead introduced to us some simple concepts from the Tibetan teachings that can help us with our disappointments and anxieties about life.

The teacher, Reema Datta, introduced us to the Four Powers:

1. The Power of Truth

Recognizing that the world is just our mental projection. What we perceive as something bad happening to us is merely a result of what we did in the past (ie. bad karma from perhaps a few life times ago).

So, if we want to stop bad karma from propagating, there are steps to help us out. Step 1: identify something negative we have done recently (eg. arguments with a loved one; cutting someone off in traffic; failure to keep a promise with a friend, etc).

2. The Power of Regret

Sincerely regret this negative action. Don't get all guilty, just honestly recognize it as a negative action that we shouldn't have done and wouldn't like if other people do it to us.

3. The Power of Resolve

Promise ourselves not to do this again, for a realistic amount of time that we can actually achieve, like: I will not argue with my mom for 3 days. Why 3 days? Because realistically I might break this promise if I set anything longer, and that will cause more bad karma for me.

4. The Power of Action

Dedicate an action to "burn off the bad karma", eg. an asana practice, or clean the gigantic pile of dishes in my sink, or vacuum the whole house. Mindfully set the intention, and then perform the action with the dedication in mind.

This to me sounds like the Buddhism version of a Catholic confession, except we are confessing to ourselves; what holds us accountable are consequences of karma in the future rather than an eternity in hell. In addition to the four steps, the teacher said we could ask a higher being to help us out. This higher being could be Jesus, Allah, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, our favorite grandpa -- anyone we regard very highly and look up as a role model. She asked us to visualize this "higher being" in our mind when we make our confessions and think our regrets. Then imagine this higher being agreeing to help us out.

Last year when this teacher led this negative karma burning session, she led it in a way that I actually saw (with my closed eyes) a white light and a holy-looking being nodding at me. That was seriously a cool experience. I finally understand why some people are so devout with their religions. A acquaintance of mine said when she was praying at church one day, she saw Jesus appearing in her mind, asking her to follow him. She bursted into tears, and since then has decided to become a nun. I would never have believed her if I hadn't gone through this experience myself. That being said, if this visualization happened to me when I was going to church at a younger age, I'd still be a Christian now.

This year for some reason my mind wasn't as settled at the workshop so I couldn't get into "the zone". Some people are very suggestible and can easily be hypnotized. For me it's much tougher because I am so skeptical. But in "the zone", somehow the brain relinquishes control to someone else's voice, and whatever that person suggests, the person complies. It's quite a nice feeling, especially when the voice is asking the brain to relax the body, to visualize a loving holy being surrounded by white light, and to feel security, bliss, joy, pure happiness. My brain was like "O-K! Let's make it happen." I wonder why we can't easily self-hypnotize to induce this kind of experience. Perhaps the consciousness doesn't like it when the subconsciousness goes off and creates these imaginary things so it normally suppresses it. Perhaps it's a skill that just requires a lot of practice to make it happen. I never took Psych 101 so I don't really know how the subconsciousness works.