Juice Press Meditation

I'm calling this 'Juice Press'. You haven't heard me say this yet but this is where it fits...

Take an orange in the juice press. You lay it up in the capsule. You lay a theme up on the 'squeezer'. Your theme will be the preciousness of human life.

How many of you are musically inclined? You have scales, or you have notes or verses. We're doing the lam rim together and the lam rim rim has a terrain.
Before you hit a milestone you have a series of contemplations. Pull one of those contemplations out and they have sub-contemplations. Your meditation is to put that on your 'squeezer' and you reflect on qualities of the preciousness of human life. This is an example of how this meditation sequence goes.

There are what are called the Ten Endowments and the Eight Freedoms. If you don't like lists you're going to have a very painful time with the lam rim. But if you understand this five-point sequence of meditation, you're going to understand how to put a capsule into the squeezer and press it. You're going to understand how how the lam rim meditation system works. It works by doing your preparation then selecting a topic.

The Dalai Lama actually advises that you read a little bit, select a topic, contemplate on it, meditate on it, one a day. Read one page, gather it's meaning. Follow a list, analyze the meaning of it. Get very clear with your noggin.

I'm adding one other thing, let that analysis spark an emotional response. This is nowhere in the literature and I take full responsibility. It may be inaccurate. I have never talked about it about it with Geshe Tenzin Zopa. What I'm doing here, is taking Rick Hanson's 'take in the good', the neuroscience of creating positive neural networks and I'm inserting it in the meditation. Take a concept and analyze it or a list and think about it.

Turn off Instagram. When I was writing these four pages, I was noticing my Instagram was distracting me all the time. It's so unbelievable. Even my meditation to provide you with a biography was really interrupted in our distracted world. I take full responsibility and want you to know that. I'd like to clean that up. I'd like to be able to sit for a full hour and dedicate myself wholeheartedly to the verses of Tsongkhapa. That's a great bhavana meditation.

On the basis of that reading or that reflection, do you feel something? Are you inspired? When you feel something, then juice press. What does Juice Press mean? Rick Hanson's 'Taking in the Good' follows the sequence of H, E, A, L.

Have a positive experience.
Enhance it with your mindfulness.
Absorb it with your body and.
Link it to the things that are negative, or the places where you don't feel grateful. The places where you feel afraid or the places where you don't believe, places where you lack trust.

Have a positive experience.
Enhance it with your mindfulness.
Absorb it into your body and
Link it.

I took that little piece and I made a sub stage. Meditation means it has a discursive component. It's not open-ended, non-conceptual, no thoughts, non-dual flow state. I'm talking about thinking, properly. Going through a list. What does it really mean? Thinking about it, you have a feeling. Something arises, you feel gratitude, juice it. Then focus your attention.

Preparation, meditation, concentration, focus. Focus even for a few minutes. Rick Hanson is talking about something as insignificant as 16 seconds to make a new neural net. I'm saying two or three minutes. Really absorb that gratitude. Really absorb that sense of urgency. Really absorb that trust. Really absorb that confidence. Really absorb that gratitude. If you lose the gratitude, go back to meditation. Reflect a little bit more. Then look for something to arise, hit it with the Juice Press.

Excerpt from the course Find True Refuge