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A beginner's mind is often compared to a
big waterfall with thoughts tumbling down like rushing water,
but there's no need to get upset or frustrated. Through
regular practice it will gradually settle, become as gentle as
a quiet river, and finally as deep and peaceful as an ocean
without waves.
We shouldn't get impatient or angry if
our mind keeps wandering and we have to bring it back every
second. Anyway, mind cannot be subdued by anger; it can only
be tamed with love and kindness. We should not, in the name of
meditation, punish or upset ourselves. We should treat our
mind the way a very tolerant and loving mother would treat her
naughty child. The child has so much energy that it jumps and
messes around all the time and tries to run out of the room.
The mother doesn't get upset or angry, she doesn't beat it up.
She lets it play, but within the confines of one room. Slowly,
the naughty child will use up all his or her energy and come
to rest. We should also allow our mind to jump anywhere it
wants to jump, but watch it constantly and bring it back every
time, a million times if necessary. We should not be
judgmental, get impatient, discouraged or angry, otherwise our
meditation will become very tense, difficult and painful. We
give total space to our mind and let it wear out its own
energy.
If we experience the big waterfall and
cannot control our mind, some breathing exercises might be
quite good.Breathing is part of us. If you are a beginner you
can close your eyes and use mental counting. With each in and
out breath you count one. You count up to five, then start
from the beginning again. We completely engage our mental
activity in the breathing without thinking about anything
else.
As we are now really trying to discipline
our mind, it may react and reject it. If we try hard, we will
become very tense and start complaining about headaches.
Headaches come because we are getting too uptight. Mind has
been able to do whatever it wanted for so long and now we are
telling it to stay here quietly, so it gets angry.
If you start to get uptight while
counting, stop counting and instead discuss with your mind:
OK, now, I'm asking you nothing, so you have no good reason to
complain. We can discuss like this because we are talking all
the time in our head in much the same way, and we really have
to find ways and means to make our mind understand why we are
doing what we are doing.
Sometimes people want a lot of
information and, accordingly, Lamas give them a lot of
information, but I think this may create obstacles. If people
asked less, I would give them less information and they would
have a simple meditation. This would be the best. As far as
Mahamudra is concerned, the great Indian Master Tilopa put it
very simply: Don't speak, don't think, don't meditate! So
simple! I am following this tradition but find myself giving
students a hundred different methods! Students meditate and
then come to me, Lama Yeshe, this breathing technique is not
working for me, it's giving me a hard time. I then explain to
them how to focus on an object. Then they look at it and it
gets strange, changing form and colour.
If we become very rigid in our
meditation or put too much effort into it, we will get these
kinds of hallucinations. When this happens, we should stop
focusing on the object and just relax. We should apply effort
very gently. So, when this happens, they come to me again and
say Lama Yeshe, this is driving me crazy, please give me
another method. And I give them something else.
This is why we live in a world of
abundant methods - because there are abundant needs and wants.
People keep asking me for different methods and I keep giving
them what they ask for, because that's the only way we can
have some communication going on, but in the end, the same
people complain, I don't like Tibetan Buddhism because it is
so complicated. Why do we have to do all this? But I never
asked them to do all this. I always taught them how to be
simple. I told them from the very beginning that it must be
simple.
So, to start with, make no complications,
just sit at ease, completely relaxed physically and mentally.
Do not engage in past or future, do not even count your
breathing. Just do nothing
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