IF1 第二课

Class 2: Stage 1 - Placing the Mind on an Object. Focus: Developing Consistent Practice & Overcoming Resistance, and Obstacle #1 - Lelo.

Welcome. Last class — intro to the course, the map that we will go through. Write in chat your biggest positive takeaway. Today we will: Review · look at Level 1 · Intention · Key skills · Problem #1 - Laziness! · Meditate.

Review: Attention and awareness. Consciousness — whatever we're experiencing in the moment.

Two tools — attention and peripheral awareness: spotlight and floodlight. Use examples: look at a sailboat, or take in the whole ocean, the sand, the temperature; look at a pen, then take in more, then less; look at a flower in front, zoom in and out.

Attention: isolates and analyzes · selects info from awareness · focuses in on an object · processes info, slower. Peripheral awareness: concerned with relationships between things · gives us info about background and context.

When one of these doesn't do its job we respond less effectively (example: driving a car, or inability to respond when tires screech). Lack of peripheral awareness: we lose the context of the situation and over-react. So we want to increase the power of these two.

The Journey begins! Name Stage 1 - placing the mind on an object. (Show video.)

You're going to want to memorize this — it's the essence of the course. Understanding the terrain is what helps you progress through the map, up the mountain, to the diamond world.

Goal of stage 1 - developing a consistent daily meditation practice. Obstacles - resistance, procrastination, fatigue, impatience, boredom, lack of motivation. Who can commit to being a master of stage 1?!

Each stage will have an intention. Intentions lead to mental actions, and repeated mental actions lead to mental habits. These habits build upon each other from one stage to the next.

Intention for stage 1: Put all your effort into forming and holding a conscious intention to sit down and meditate for a set period every day, and practice diligently for the duration of the sit. No need to be hard on yourself and force yourself to practice — work on strengthening your motivation and intention. When your intentions are strong and clear, appropriate actions naturally follow. This is true at every stage.

Who brushed their teeth this morning? Who had to motivate themselves to do it? You've made that a routine — you don't have to think about it. Creating practice routines: the clearer it is, the more likely it happens, and it creates a habit. Setting specific practice goals — daily sit and journal; Stage 4 by the end of the month. Generating strong motivation (a daily brushing/shower for your mind). Cultivating discipline and diligence — they are skills we can develop, muscles we can grow.

You are training yourself. Training means working on your motivation and intentions until the simple acts of sitting down and meditating follow naturally; repeatedly, that becomes a habit. Practice vs. good practice — make the most of your time. Sometimes you're just going through the motions; sometimes you're actually getting better.

Breath — whenever we say breath, we are always talking about the sensation of breath: temperature, pressure, air moving on the skin anywhere around the tip of the nose, inside the nostrils, or the upper lip. Not a visualization, idea, or thought of the breath.

Use the breath because: it's always with you — you can use it anywhere, every day, until your last breath. It lets you be a completely passive observer — no need to repeat a mantra or generate a visualization. It changes and becomes fainter as concentration deepens, making it suitable for developing powerful attention; and its constant changing makes it conducive to insight. Mastery — never missing a daily practice session; do not procrastinate while meditating.

What is the first problem of meditation? Lelo: laziness. Is it laziness? That's part of it — it is anything that prevents us from developing a consistent practice: kids, job, coffee with friends, working too late the night before. A thousand things. It's not so much laziness as a lack of establishing and maintaining priorities. What if we really believed meditation was the key to happiness — the key to seeing the world directly?

Fitting life into our practice (not practice into our life): We all have things to do — get up, breakfast, kids to school, work, and meditation fits in somewhere. But then something comes up: "I'll meditate after dropping the kids," then coffee with a friend; "I'll do it at lunch," but we're full; "after work," but we're tired — so just ten minutes, but we're really tired. That's fitting meditation into life. A huge shift is doing the opposite: I meditate 7:00–7:45, and my life revolves around that. I do a personal retreat every year; my life revolves around that. I've given up many jobs to study with Geshe Michael and to meditate. Establish the priority as best you can and keep it unfailingly. Are we willing to train like an Olympic athlete?

Problems: 1) Time — can't meditate in our spare time. 2) Procrastination — finding other things to do first (check email, clean, coffee, phone); make it the priority and practice critical ignoring of everything competing for your time. 3) Reluctance and resistance — we sit down but then daydream because it's more fun than training the mind (watching TV in the gym is easier than doing the reps); overcome with inspiration and motivation — external at first, then internal with success. 4) Self-doubt — months or years, same level, same problems. The most effective way to solve all of these is to just do it; nothing works as quickly as perseverance and diligence.

Corrections #1-4: 1. Thinking of the good qualities of meditation. 2. Decide you want them. 3. Make some effort. 4. Shing jang or practiced ease.

Alignment is important — if you don't have it, it will hurt. The Seven (or Eight) Features of the Sitting Posture (of Vairochana):

(1) Sitting cross-legged, in the Vajrasana position. (2) Spine straight like an arrow. (3) Hands in the meditative posture. (4) Shoulders level. (5) Head slightly bent forward. (6) Eyes cast slightly downward and slightly open. (7) Lips and teeth in a natural position with the tongue on the upper palate near the teeth. (8) An eighth feature sometimes added: focusing on the breath.

Yogi of appearances — it's like a shortcut. If you embody your perfect form, you will sit up straight; you will move through the world with love and grace.

Posture (part of posture is the intention to be awake and vivid, with something nice in your heart) · Motivation · 4-step transition · Really find the sensation — temperature, pressure, air moving on skin · Counting 1–10, 10–1 (the second counting is a marker) · Intention — practice with diligence at some point in the meditation, and when you come back, reset that intention.

Date and time · Length of sit · Intention and object (sit down and meditate daily, practice diligently for the duration of the sit) · Quality of focus · What stage did you reach, what problems, what antidotes? · Reflection · How I will carry my meditation into the day · Intention for the day.

Group sharing and Q&A.

Daily 20-min sit (doesn't include class time, as it gets you out of your routine), journaling insights. Review and practice what we did in class. Location, time, duration, intention. Intention for stage 1: put all your effort into forming and holding a conscious intention to sit and meditate a set period every day, and practice diligently — think about why meditation is so important in your life. Send photos of your spaces (WeChat is set up).

Welcome + introduce the idea of the weekend classes (review, practice, Q&A). Review (Nicole): Stage 1 — motivation starts before you sit. Practice intentions · Prepare the space (make your place sweet) · Importance of posture · Set motivation · 4-step transition · Breath — counting.

Meditation (Earle): focus on the 4-step transition and finding the object, then counting. Step 1 - focus on the present (open, relaxed awareness, priority to sensations over thoughts). Step 2 - bodily sensations. Step 3 - sensations related to breath. Step 4 - sensations of breath at the nose. Really find the sensation; counting 1–10, 10–1; reset intention when you return. Q&A.

Notes for next time: Changed class to 90 minutes. Wrote more notes in chat and had it translated. Encouraged cameras on; asked who did homework; noted the refund only applies if you do the work — fully engage. Didn't do the posture or the 4 antidotes. Idea: an exercise of finding the object (close eyes, find object; open; repeat). Didn't do the Vairochana piece — should have.