​Reflections on Teaching HeartMirror Breathing Practice at the Jikoji Zen Retreat Center - July 14, 2018

I deeply bow to all of my teachers for doing their best to teach Dharma to me. (Which is a difficult task!)    

An even deeper bow goes out to the Sangha of the Jikoji Zen Retreat Center which has welcomed me in their midst!

Class Outline for the Heart Mirror Pranayama July 14, 2018

1. Breathing practice is the quickest way to change the content and quality of our minds, so we can begin on the Noble path

2 This Breathing Practice is healing in nature

3. This is a purification practice. 

4. With it we can shed layers of delusions and ignorance. 

5. Listen attentively during breathing 

6. Our pain, suffering and karma keeps our point of awareness fixed and we are not able to move our awareness at will.

7. If we are successful in letting go of whatever is holding us back, like our attachments and suffering, then the various body energies will eventually make their way into the heart. 

There they will meet with the awakened Mind and if the union was successful then the experience of emptiness will arise. 

The wheel of Dharma is set into motion with first experience of emptiness. 

This practice helps to enter a samadhi-like state. 

In this state you can taste the suspension, but not the cessation of samsara. 

From Setting in Motion the Wheel or Dharma Sutra
“ The knowledge and the vision arose in [Buddha]: 'Unshakeable is the liberation of my mind. This is my last birth. Now there is no more re-becoming." “


​Turn the subtitles On to read what I am saying.

Transcript of the video below:

Hello everyone. Today is July 14 2018 and I
just came back from teaching at the

Jikoji Zen Center in the Santa Cruz
Mountains.
So first of all I want to say
big thank you to the Jikoji Zen Center
especially to Doug Jacobson and Eric

Remington who have welcomed me in the
community in the Sangha and let me teach here.

So first of all, a really good
lesson today. We had 15 people at the Zen Center.

What I taught was basically a technique for
entering into a samadhi-like state

a technique for entering in a higher
concentration, higher level of

concentration. Because for example you
can do various kinds of practices:

breathing practices, meditation
on mantras, singing mantras, you can also

sit in the meditation without really
trying to think of anything, or you can

also do a Taoist meditation for example
where they circulate energy throughout

the body. In fact I did a lot of that
myself throughout the years, but the

truth is that there needs to be a direct
experience and quite often the direct

experience doesn't happen with various methods.Some

methods are very good some are
okay. This particular method that I've

been teaching, what I liked about it, was
that it was extremely simple. Almost a deceptively

simple technique, but it can produce
profound changes.
Today we had 15 people, and of those,  I spoke to three or even four

people today. One lady had a very
emotional experience, realizing what

potential is holding her back. There were
you know other people who

came over and said: "Alex, Wow this was
really powerful and profound!"
So if you can remember those profound experiences,
then definitely write them down, because

those are insights that you have
received,  for yourself. Those

insights sometimes are ridiculous in the
sense that they would only make sense to

you. They they're not
gonna make sense to anybody else, but

that insight that you have received, or
hopefully you have received, could be very

helpful and this practice, it is called Heart Mirror practice

the full name is: Heart Mirror of
Vajrasattv. It's a Tibetan Buddhist practice

We can hopefully have David Verdesi come out
one  day. He was the teacher who has taught a group

of people of which I was part of in January 2018.

This is a practice of breathing and of progressive
relaxation, of letting go of your various

obstacles.

If you're trying
to accomplish something you are

definitely going to have obstacles, so
don't be surprised!
This practice, the

Heart Mirror pranayama
breathing meditation, can serve, maybe can

help you on various levels. For example:
you can, depending on where you are, so to

speak, in your life,
Maybe you are simply
trying to survive because something has

happened,  maybe a big event happened
in your life and you're simply trying to

get by. So this is a great practice to
just keep keep going,

and keep your willpower going. But maybe
you already have a pretty

comfortable life, and you are
trying to see if  there is something

else out there. So this practice also can
put you in touch, very easily, with for

lack of better term, oneness of all
things around.
​ I ramble sometimes and

I want to wrap up hopefully you had a
positive experience. Hopefully

you have benefited from the experience.
If you have benefited from experience

please comment
below on this video, or you can talk to

me, talk to anybody else and see if you
can make sense of the practice and your

insights. Do they make sense?  Maybe
they don't exactly make sense. Maybe

this is  just a
a first step towards bigger insights?
 
 Thank you



Watch this video on YouTube!