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Buddhist Astrology Site These lectures were transcribed by T Vd Broek. Heartfelt gratitude is offered for all the hours of work spent on this Dharma activity. These talks are offered free of charge. They have been slightly edited.

Jan 21, 1990
We have been working on the meditation technique utilizing the breathing and the awareness of that, and then of ones body being part of the world. Then of the full emersion of one's body into the world around and then we went into inhaling and exhaling love or the wish for other sentient beings to be happy, trying to give it a little magic, to work it all into the lines that our body's makeup is to have this intuitive sense of combating illness or disease, doing what is necessary to keep our balance. Then we brought in allowing our mind to believe in itself to the extent that it also could heal itself. In many ways our mind does have that capacity. The mind in it's full sense, you could term it conscious or unconscious, however you want to label it, is very deep and powerful.
This evening's point is to touch base with gaining a healthy respect for our mind in it's full scope. Obviously we have a lot of innate feelings within our mind. Natural qualities in our mind which help us balance our sight. As we are in the world, whether men or women, we have different experiences and traumas, pressures, different happinesses as we have grown. Yet we have grown into full people with what we would like to think of as fairly balanced lives.
However, our mind on a very deep level has a lot of power. It is interesting, as you become a meditator, you don't gain control over yourself. If you gain a healthier respect for what it means to maintain a good equilibrium, I think the more you get into yourself and you really understand that you can't possibly claim control. You can try not to let the boat rock too much. Try to not set yourself up into an emotional ego situation or personality situation. But really, the flux and flow of your personality is deeper and greater than anything your little personality could possibly claim to control.
Following on last week where I was dealing on depression, how in the middle of very difficult and suffering situation, there is not a lot one can do with depression. Really, you have got to suffer it through. But if you allow yourself a bit of magic in your mind that says, just as my blood knows how to attack and destroy viruses, may the goodness of my mind, good feelings, good nature, good wishes for happiness, might they work naturally like my blood works, to destroy the causes of depression and whatever is manifested in my depression.
This evening, following the same vein in a more general way in the sense of saying you do have a very high set of deep innate balances in your psyche. Your mind does continuously check and balance, doing things for you. There is a capacity. Whether you term it as convincing yourself such as when you get up in the morning, convincing yourself that it is going to be a wonderful day. Actually, it might be raining outside, you have to go to work. There may be a lot of problems in front of you but you can somehow get up and feel alright about it. If fact, you get up!
The point is, whether you think you actually do it to yourself consciously or it is an unconscious thing, I think that the checks and balances which go on in you are very deep. For example, when you have a trauma. A death in your life. Your personality will create little sets of things which say, "It's alright! They went to heaven! They were alright people, we all loved them... " Your mind does little tricks to keep it's sanity.
The focus for this evenings meditation is to try to allow yourself to be more open to that you do have a natural system which is part of your psyche. To allow that to be there along with the magic of being able to heal yourself. It's working on it in a little different tangent. That the deep innate nature of your being has that capacity. More modern Tibetan teachers speak of the Buddha nature. Initially they said the Buddha nature is neutral. There there two ways of looking at Buddha nature. One is that the Buddha nature is innately pure. This is correct and the way it should be. Because if Buddha nature was good, then the logical problem of how we ever got bad would arise. There is that logical problem. So rather it is said that the basic Buddha nature is pure being neither good nor bad.
Secondly, they say that there is also a developmental Buddha nature which is that wish for happiness. Some teachers have started to say that this one actually has a quality of goodness to it because it is the aspiration for that which is the expression of pure love, compassion, joy and such things. And those things do fall in the side of good. So because we don't have full enlightenment, we don't have the fully manifest or revealed Buddha nature. And because we don't have that realization, we are working on our developmental Buddha nature. And that means working on our aspirations, our wishes to become enlightened, or to become whole, healed, however you want to phrase it.
For the meditation, allow yourself to open. And it is a deeper opening. Last week we dealt with the issue of depression and trying to say, hey, it's alright. Let me just believe I am being healed. For this evening, it's a different aspect saying that the natural state of mind has checks and balances. How they are placed there or whatever is irrelevant. They are there. Just allow yourself to be conscious that you are part of the world around you and try to dissolve the boundaries. Try to be aware of being fully part of the world around which is based on breathing, inhalations and exhalations. That the air is mixed with the blood in the body. The whole body is part of the world. Then also to open and allow your mind to be fully open and relaxed in that. To have faith or confidence that you can open and in being open that the natural checks and balances will heal you. Keep you healed. Keep you mentally balanced and such.
And the point is that you can become a more naturally opened person. Not having some idea that your ego is a wonderfully open personality and arn't you fully enlightened personality! That is really ego centric to think of it in that way. Rather to be open is just to not have fears or inhibitions. That is something which is hard to strive for. But it is just to have a faith, to be relaxed with yourself. To be able to be open to what is going on in and around you and not have fears, paranoiacs, and such. Those superstitions which we have which sometimes affect and influence us.
In the meditation, more emphasis is to say my body is fully part of the world around me and allow the vehicle of your breathing to be the channel in which you can get into this sort of relaxing. And this time, place more emphasis on allowing the mind to be free in manifesting what it does in healing itself and being naturally pure. Manifesting your developing Buddha nature.
Another factor I would like you to consider. You have your mind, and your mind is sitting inside your body and saying yes, "I'm all part of the world" And there is sort of this affirmation. "I am part of the world around". And that is one way you can do it. This is an affirmation saying yes I am there.
There is another way and it's in the sense that you don't try to affirm anything. In your affirmations you have thrown out an area and it says I am part of this area. But then you might say there is still more area. So you try to make the area bigger. And you always sort of end up with a threshold or a boundary for your awareness. And you always question is is my awareness really encompassing everything. Like I say, you have to throw it out further and further. First you throw it a hundred feet, then you try to throw it to the sun and the moon, and you ask is that big enough? And then you try to throw it a bit further. And it is still a concept affirming something. So it is still putting something out there and you have to believe that you have encompassed it all. It's an interesting little mind game we play.
Another way of doing it is actually an negation, which is to say it's wide open. In that way you havn't affirmed anything. You have actually negated. It means that you don't affirm, you just say it's naked, its open. You have to think about it in your own mind. But, if there is no point in me which is.... The whole focus is to try to get over feeling one's self as an independent entity, get over that sense of independence which is actually a cause of a lot of problems. Of course we have the freedom of movement and such things, but the ego sense of independence is the cause of most of our delusions and problems.
That is the reason we meditate this way. To become more at one with the world and to feel good about the world. To have positive feelings in the world. That is the objective. So, as I say, the original technique we have been working with is an affirmation. In this technique rather,than having just a point, I'll leave it up to you to discover it, is to just say that there is nothing in me which is independently self existent. Normally your ego says "I encompass the world" and "I am part of the world." But if you don't have any independence, like you can phrase it, your consciousness is part of the whole matrix of the world around, then actually it just all disappeared. It's a pretty hefty thought. It means that you actually, its like all of a sudden this little center which was saying I am part of it all, disappeared. And so it's you are part of it all. But you didn't do anything to do it.
You think about it. You are going to get to the same result. You are totally part of the world. One way is the affirmation. The second way is a non affirming which is just cracking wide open. Like I say, you just pop the delusion. And once you have popped the delusion, it's like there is just openness. I'll leave it for you to figure it through. See if you can find it. The objective is to feel part of the world and not have a sense of independence. That is the objective. There is different techniques.
So the first part of the meditation is to try to find that objective in yourself where it is coming quite naturally. There is the working with the breathing, the blood, the body. That your body is part of the world. Helps you get a real confidence that this is really the way it is. And then you are left with your little ego perspective which is sitting in there and you have got to dissolve it, try to make it open up. There is the affirmation way, or there is a way of popping the illusion. And the other thing is to allow yourself to have confidence that you are developing Buddha nature, it is always healing you. Again, you try to loose insecurity, fears, paranoia you have, and be a little more relaxed with yourself.
Meditation: