(From Tilopa (928 to 1009 C.E.))
Instructions
Take the long silent moments in the recording to recognize your capacity to rest your mind.
Meditation
- Rest free of focusing the mind on anything.
- Do not recall the past, that which uses memory.
- Do not think about the future, that which projects to the unknown.
- Do not analyze the present, that which depends on the senses to experience.
- Let the mind relax and rest without anything to do.
- Rest the mind by not being too focused or too loose, be balanced and at ease.
- Notice for a moment, if you are engaging with thoughts of the past, the future, or the present.
- Rest the mind free from doing anything.
- Remain alert to all that is going on, but free from fixating on anything.
- Is the mind calm?
- Does the mind have an alive quality to it?
- Remain awake and calm, free from fixating on anything.
- Rest the mind.
After Meditation
- While the mind was at rest, was it free of being disturbed by thoughts of the past, present, future?
- Was the mind undisturbed by feelings, sensations, memories and emotions?
- Can you distinguish what makes the mind clear or unclear?
- Did you find you didn’t have to apply as many antidotes in order to meditate, like watching your breath?
- Were you free of being dull or distracted by your thoughts? When in a group of people meditating, it is obvious those people that fall asleep when they meditate. It is harder to detect when someone’s mind is running wild. Remember they are both obstacles to meditation.
- Were there moments you rested free of fabricating the meditation experience?
- Is there a growing sense of clarity, that knows that the mind is calm?
- Is there stability of the mind at rest?
During the Day
Notice if you are stuck in a life event where you react by saying, “I like this, I don’t like this?” Rest the mind right there when you find you are fabricating a life experience if only for a moment. In meditation, as well as in life, we tend to exaggerate a “good” experience and want to replicate it. Just observe whatever is happening and see it as experience. Rest in experience when you remember during the day.