Common Sense Guide To Meditation #4 - What Is Meditation?

This is Part 4 of John Butler's 'common sense' guide to meditation. "It is as natural as breathing. You could call it 'common sense'. Feet on the ground ... bottom on the chair. The art of meditation is losing interest in the results. Thoughts are not the enemy - don't try and bully them into submission. They are like clouds coming and going. Just let them go.

Transcript

What are we talking about?

Of course,

Meditation is as natural as breathing.

People have done meditation since the beginning of time,

Haven't they?

You've only got to pause and just look about you,

Listen to the birds,

Look at the horizon.

You just step outside the door,

You feel better,

Don't you?

Open the window and you feel better.

Have a wash,

Have a cup of tea and you feel better.

All these things in meditation are very effective.

People have been meditating without attaching that name to it,

Always and always will.

It's always been associated with careful work.

My mother loved to knit,

She was always knitting.

This is one of her old woolies,

Quietly knitting by the fireside.

That's perfect meditation.

Dad was an artist,

He used to draw,

Always drawing.

He'd be drawing now,

Just looking out the window,

Just drawing the shape of that little bush there.

It brings you into the present,

Doesn't it?

Because what is meditation?

Primarily,

It's just bringing us into the present moment.

When you're attending to something,

In a way,

The more precision the better.

You're naturally in the present moment so that you don't make a mess of it when you're meditating.

You're taken out of your bothersome thoughts.

At least if you do what you're doing with more or less full attention,

More attention the better,

Then it's more effective.

This is a bit of a new-fangled word,

Meditation,

Really,

At least in the West it is.

I never heard of it until quite late on in life.

It used to be called prayer.

I still don't know quite which word to use.

I don't quite know where one ends and the other begins,

Really.

Meditation's just become the fashionable word recently,

Hasn't it?

It used to be called just common sense,

Didn't it?

Keep your feet on the ground,

Attend to what you're doing.

As Dad used to say to me,

Trying to teach me to bang a nail in straight,

He said,

Watch the hammer,

Pay attention,

Then the nail will go in straight.

And it does,

Amazingly.

If you don't pay attention,

It goes crooked,

Doesn't it?

Or it could be more simple.

Then,

Just to sort of make a bit more of an issue of it,

Because there are levels.

In all this spiritual work,

We start off from where we are.

And it's like going up into the sky.

There are levels.

And the higher you go up into the sky,

The more you see.

And it's just like that.

So with meditation,

There's this ordinary sort of common sense layer of meditation that just makes you feel better,

A bit better maybe.

And then there are the deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper levels ad infinitum,

Which can be a sort of refinement of the basic common sense.

And literally,

The sky is the limit.

And even that there,

Beyond the sky,

There's such a thing,

Beyond limit.

There's absolutely no use fighting thoughts.

And you don't like to get rid of them either.

Certainly not in that way.

And I'm always a bit nervous about words like concentration,

Which implies a sort of something rather aggressive.

My favorite analogy about thoughts is clouds.

You may have seen something I wrote,

A long poem called Clouds.

Well,

On a day like this,

Look,

You look out of the window and it's just a gray,

Isn't it?

But you know,

Those of you that have ever been in an airplane,

That beyond the gray is the blue sky.

Well,

Thoughts are like clouds.

Thoughts are really just a layer in the process of raising consciousness from the basic sort of street level,

Ordinary life,

Up to the highest level possible.

We go through many layers,

And just like up in the sky,

Thoughts occupy a layer,

Just like clouds do.

You can be below the clouds,

Or you can be above the clouds.

And very commonly,

We are actually in the clouds.

And this is what we call thinking.

And there can be nice thoughts or rather unpleasant thoughts,

Just like,

You know,

Nice fluffy summer clouds or dark,

Threatening winter clouds.

So you get all sorts.

But thoughts are just thoughts.

They're really just,

Without being too clever about it,

Just movements in the mind,

Like ripples in the sea,

Move currents in the sea.

Consciousness,

Pure consciousness is unchanging.

So we can talk of it in terms of stillness,

Unchanging.

God is unchanging.

But within that unchanging aspect of pure consciousness,

There are all sorts of movements.

There's what you can call mental movement of thinking.

Then there's come down into creation,

And it solidifies a bit,

And you get what's a physical movement,

Or what we call the movements of the world.

But it's all held within this great stillness of peace of God that passes understanding.

And so in meditation,

We just have to,

You don't fight,

What you're fighting for,

You just gently go through them,

Like that.

And then it's much more effective than trying to bully them into submission.

It's just let go.

Just let go like that.

So simple,

Very gentle.

And in letting go,

You just,

Like a balloon,

Once the balloon rise up,

It just lets go the weights,

Doesn't it?

Let go.

Up we go.

Thoughts are just thoughts.

There's a golden rule about letting go.

Letting go,

Let go of whatever you can let go of.

Do you just want the still,

Small voice of God,

Or do you want God himself?

If you get a glimpse,

If you get a glimpse of what you're talking about,

Smile and carry on,

Be encouraged.

We are present in this unchanging stillness.

It's everywhere all the time.

It all happens within this unchanging stillness,

Which you can also call presence.

And if you want,

You can call it the presence of God.

We get all sorts of presentations,

Don't we?

All sorts of things come on.

Things arise in the mind.

Is this it?

What should I be doing more?

And if we start asking questions,

We'll soon find that it takes us away from this.

We go back inside our head and say,

Is this it?

Am I happy or should I be happier?

The art really is in losing interest in results,

A simple trust in letting go.

Utter simplicity.

No doubt,

No question.

Childlike innocence.

Along comes a little thought,

So what?

A surprising answer given to us by the head of the tradition from which I learned in a school of meditation,

From which,

Who guided the school.

Somebody asked him what to do with his thoughts,

And that's what he answered,

A choice to acquire the couldn't-care-less attitude towards them.

So I know there are times when they're very,

Very strong,

Absolutely tormenting us,

Driving us nuts,

Aren't they?

And of course,

Most of the world is feeding them all the time,

Isn't it?

If we watch,

You know,

If we fill ourselves up with all the latest things on internet and the news and that,

We can get completely swallowed up by it all.

That's why it's so simple,

So useful,

Just this simple,

Simple exercise of feet on the ground,

Bottom of the chair,

Just listen,

Just look.

Even in a big city,

You can do it.

And you'll find this,

It actually seems miraculous when you first discover it,

This stillness is ever-present,

Really,

Really is.

Try it for yourselves and see.

That's the one thing we have to do,

Is practice.

If you just hear someone like me saying it,

Of course,

You can understand it at the time,

And five minutes later,

You've lost it again.

So we must,

If you want to,

If you really want to find this unassailable,

Whatever you call it,

We must practice.

You've been carrying this bit of luggage around with you for a long time,

Now let it go,

Come back here,

You don't want to do,

You see this resistance,

People hang on to these things.

Surprisingly,

You try and make some people come to the present,

They won't,

And very often,

When we talk about our suffering or some terrible event,

We hold on to it like grim death,

You know,

We won't let go.

It takes a lot of practice to come into the present.

It takes a lot of practice to come into the present.

It's so easy,

It's so natural,

And yet we insist on holding onto these things,

Creating questions,

Real or not real.

Well,

You'll have to find out in your own experience,

Gradually,

Gradually,

Gradually over many years,

Which is more real,

And the less real is superseded by the more real.

But unless,

Until you get experience of something better,

You will continue to dwell in what you think is what you're,

In your experience,

Is the most interesting thing or something.

It's work,

It really is,

This is work.

If we wish to proceed along the spiritual path,

Dreams are dreams,

Lucid dreams or not lucid dreams,

They come and they go.

Here now,

This,

What we're talking about,

This stillness is ever present,

And within this,

All the wonderful,

Dreadful happenings of life take their place,

And there's always a clue,

Because if you can describe them and give them name and form,

You see,

Name and form,

They are part of the performance.

You see,

Stillness,

This presence is nameless and formless,

And you cannot describe it,

As we cannot describe God,

What we call God,

Anything that you can describe is not it.

Whatever you can describe is part of the lower,

You see,

You start off from the indescribable,

And we rise and fall through these many levels of consciousness,

Just like an airplane goes up and down,

You can't describe the upper limits of the sky,

It's just boundless,

Isn't it?

Pure freedom.

Now,

As you descend,

You come into things that can be described,

Upper layers of the air,

Little wispy clouds,

Which we can begin to describe,

Because they have a limit,

They have a shape,

They have a color and a texture,

Something that you can get your mind around,

Literally get our mind around so that we can produce words and descriptions,

You see,

And then that gradually descends down into the sort of further crystallization of what we call the world.

Now,

That meditation or what spiritual work is the reverse person,

Now,

No matter how dramatic and compelling,

These events,

Happenings,

They are part of the nature of the pure being coming down into manifest performance,

And we can get completely swallowed up by this,

Gripped by it,

Literally,

Consumed by it,

Trapped by it,

And of course,

We love it,

And particularly by the central performer,

Which is what we call me,

The ego,

My dream,

My lucid dream,

My sorrow,

My suffering,

This is what I saw,

And yet here and now,

Come again into this,

Pure,

Simple being,

No claim,

It isn't mine,

It isn't yours,

It isn't any body,

It's singular,

In that we can smile at the performance,

And let it go.

To these questions,

We probably never get an answer to,

Not at that level,

You get an answer because you come to see that what it is,

That's the answer,

And you see that it's what it is,

What's the question?

It's just a lucid dream,

We are told that God calls us,

What is it that calls us?

What is it?

You know how a compass,

It's always pointing north,

Isn't it?

It seems to me we have a sort of inner compass,

What does it ask for?

When people,

In the school where I was taught,

When people came for their first interview,

They were asked the question,

What do you really want?

What's your heart's desire?

And people would give various answers for that.

It's a good question to bear in mind,

What do we really want?

There is something in all of us,

Isn't there?

Some deep sense that we're incomplete and we need something,

Love or freedom or meaning or something like that,

Or maybe just this indefinable thing we call God.

Of course,

The ego does get mixed up in it,

Inevitably,

That's all right,

Because the ego's right next to us,

All the time.

It's just like,

You know,

There's this pure being and there's the ego,

So of course it accompanies the journey all the way,

Because the ego thrives on description,

It's always looking for results.

That's why we're warned or advised not to look for results,

Because that's always a projection of the ego.

Let this completely unassuming,

Gentle presence just inform us.

You know when a child gets completely tormented by some matter screaming its head off in her about something rather,

What does a mother do or a father do next?

Oh,

Come on,

Ducky,

Just strokes his little head,

Comfort,

Comforter,

Isn't it?

What Jesus calls the presence,

The spirit,

The comforter,

Comforter will give you all knowledge,

The peace of God that passes understanding.

To understand is to stand under,

The peace of God that passes understanding.

There's a famous book called The Pilgrim's Progress,

Medieval book.

It's a journey,

Long journey.

I've been doing it a long time too,

Go through many trials and troubles in this world,

Depression,

Great suffering.

Everyone that's taken this path goes through the mill,

The mill.

You don't just get a,

Yes,

You can get a sort of nice answer the day you start and you know,

Bingo,

Found it,

Ha,

Ha.

Next day you get pulled down again.

Fight the good fight,

My friend,

Stick to it,

Daily practice,

Daily plod.

You're not alone.

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