Talk On Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

Ajahn Brahm talks about the path to meditation. An attitude of kindness to whatever we experience is an important aspect of meditation. Mindfulness empowered by kindness - also called kindfulness - turns the present moment into the pleasant moment. This way we can dive more and more inwards and we find ourselves on the path to more and more stillness. This talk is part of an online meditation retreat with the famous teacher Ajahn Brahm.

Transcript

I was now going to have a short Dhamma talk about meditation and follow that in.

.

.

I think I'm going to have to do half an hour for talk and then do a guided meditation.

So when we do our meditation,

I think I've seen many of you before.

So I think you all know that how I teach meditation is one of the most simple things in the world to do.

One of the reasons people find it difficult is because they don't do it properly.

By doing it properly,

I mean that sometimes they put so much effort into their meditation.

They really try so hard.

Instead of trying so hard,

We have this other idea of lowering your expectations.

I mentioned this recently because I have a monk who's visiting me from one of our little future branch monasteries down in Albany.

He was asked in a recent talk that when I went down to visit him,

What my reaction was.

And I told everybody after I visited him that it was his little hermitage was beyond my expectations.

He was quite surprised by that comment.

And then I told him that the reason why it was beyond my expectations was because I'd lowered my expectations so far,

That anything could exceed the expectations.

Now that was not just a joke.

That was actually something which was very powerful because we sometimes have too many expectations.

And then we miss the reality of what we're experiencing.

So I don't know what you know about meditation.

But sometimes we have all expectations,

Which means we don't see the truth of this moment.

We don't know how to make peace with it.

We don't know how to learn from it.

So little by little during this retreat,

You have some very interesting experiences.

Some are just going to be wonderful experiences,

Some not so wonderful.

But nevertheless,

All of those experiences you will find you can learn from and grow from.

One of my first meditation teachers told me there is no such thing as a bad meditation.

And my first response to that was,

Sir,

You don't know my meditation.

I don't know what you think I'm doing.

He said,

No,

No,

No,

No.

All the meditations,

If it doesn't go according to plan,

Not your expectations,

That is the error there.

You're expecting too much.

And you're not learning.

You're not learning from what you're experiencing.

And learning the way to meditate is not to get rid of things.

It's not to attain things.

It's learning how to be here and allowing yourself to go in.

Go in,

In,

In,

In to this moment.

And you'll find that when you want something,

When you're complaining,

All you're doing is strengthening what we call in Buddhism the Hinduism,

The five Hinduism.

And as you avoid that problem,

And you have this much greater loving kindness,

Metta,

Compassion,

You are opening the door of your heart to this moment with kindness.

You'll find that this moment is not nowhere near as bad as you thought it was.

And you go more into it.

And as you go more into this moment,

You'll find that that is the way,

That is the escape to something which the Buddha or Bhagavan Ananda,

A reporter the Buddha has said,

The literal escapes are from suffering.

The escapes are going inwards,

Inwards,

Inwards,

Inwards,

Into this body and mind,

Into the silence,

Into the present moment,

Into whatever you're experiencing now.

That opens up.

So the simile which best represents this,

Please know that I never plan my talks.

I just see what comes next.

And this simile is one of the most beautiful ones,

Which I concocted many,

Many years ago.

And this was a simile about the thousand petal lotus.

A lotus is a common symbol of Buddhism,

All types of Buddhism.

And the nice thing about the lotus,

There's many things about the lotus.

One of the things about a lotus is you can urinate on a lotus.

And all the urine,

No matter how thick and smelly it is,

Will all fall off the leaves,

The petals of the lotus,

And nothing sticks to it.

It still smells the same afterwards.

Or you can portion now number five over the lotus.

And that too will run all off it,

And so that when it's all gone,

You can't even smell the perfume anymore.

It still smells like a lotus.

And that simile which I.

.

.

You can understand it.

It's very clear that if people praise you,

That's like pouring Chanel No.

5 over you.

But it doesn't stick to you.

You're free of that.

If they criticize you,

That's like urinating over the lotus.

The smell doesn't linger on the lotus.

All of that flows off as well.

And the lotus still stays,

Smells the same afterwards.

Now this lotus always has a very pure smell.

It's not strong,

But it's subtle and gorgeous.

So this is actually the praise and blame simile of the lotus.

Nothing affects you.

But where we get to the deeper simile of the lotus,

That is why a lotus is always closed up at night time.

And as it opens,

It's closed up at night time.

And during the daytime when the sun comes out,

The lotus starts to open up.

It needs the warmth and the light of the sun to open it up.

That's what creates the mechanism for opening up the lotus.

And the warmth of the sun stands for kindness,

The softness,

This loving kindness.

And the light stands for mindfulness.

It does take mindfulness and kindness to open up the lotus.

In other words,

What we call kindfulness.

Sometimes people use mindfulness,

Sometimes they use willpower,

But they forget the importance of the kindfulness,

The gentleness,

The warmth,

The love.

We do that when we're meditating.

It's easy to love beautiful things,

But to love irritating things.

That's what we learn.

So it opens it up.

And that's the irritation,

What we sometimes think is bad meditation.

As that sort of,

We just accept it,

Be kind to it,

Go inside.

We go inside of it.

It's just nature.

That leaf opens up.

We go to the next layer of petals.

So that can receive the warmth and light of the sun.

And that opens up to receive the next,

To see the next layer of petals.

So that can open up.

Layer by layer by layer of petals opens up.

They don't do anything.

Just allow the warmth,

The kindness and the mindfulness,

The light to stay on those petals of the lotus.

And one by one they open up and go deeper and deeper.

And it's surprising because you start off with,

So maybe in a negative state,

Maybe depressed state,

A fed up state or whatever,

Mind running all over the place.

Just be with it.

With kindness and awareness.

What happens is you go inside.

And those difficulties or problems or what you think is bad meditation states,

They recede away from you,

They go further and further away to the distance.

Because what you're experiencing becomes more and more beautiful,

More and more subtle.

The way of meditation is going inside.

Never getting rid of things or running away from things or getting more things.

You go inside of things.

As you go inside of this moment more and more and more,

It becomes incredibly beautiful.

That astounds you.

Astounds you to so much joy and happiness and beauty right in this moment.

What I need to do is to sit here comfortably and kindly.

Awareness gets more and more strong,

More and more energized,

More and more peace,

More and more happiness.

And what is happening is you begin to like the path of meditation.

You learn into how easy it is,

How joyful it is.

And after a while,

Like me,

You might get addicted to meditation.

It's not a bad thing to get addicted to.

In other words,

You like it so much that experiences when you have the opportunity for retreat,

Seven days.

Ah,

Great,

You got an excuse to turn off your emails.

You got an excuse not to watch the news.

You got an excuse not to do anything except notice to rest,

To eat,

To exercise,

And to go inside of yourself in your meditation.

And as you do this,

As you deeply go inside,

The more mindfulness you have,

The more mindfulness,

I mean,

The more energy that mindfulness has.

It gets very empowered.

And because it gets empowered,

What you see is more and more beautiful.

The deeper you go into that thousand petalled lotus,

Which is your body and mind,

The thing which you give your name to,

You go deeper and deeper into it,

The petals become more fragrant and also more beautiful.

The colourings and the texture,

Everything becomes more subtle and delightful.

And because you like the path,

It means that when it's a time to meditate,

You just want to do it.

And when you don't have too much of a problem with restlessness,

You start thinking all over the place.

I used to wonder where does that restlessness come from?

And often I would,

If my mind would wander off somewhere,

Start thinking,

I would go and grab it and bring it back again.

And that was an endless thing which was going on,

Always wandering here and bringing it back again,

Wandering somewhere else,

Bringing it back again.

Until you decided to use some insight,

Why does the mind wander off?

Thinking about things which are not important,

Fantasizing,

Dreaming,

Why?

And I realized that because my mind and I had a bad relationship,

Because I was always trying to train my mind,

My mind never lived up to my expectations.

I could always do more,

Bad Ajahn Brahm.

Instead of thinking like that,

I thought,

Oh,

Come on,

Be kind to your mind.

It soon became the best of friends.

I mean that,

Just the idea,

The simile of whatever you're watching,

You're enjoying,

You're learning from,

You're valuing,

Which meant it's very hard for restlessness to come up,

Because I was with my best friend all the time,

My meditation.

You know what it's like when you're speaking with a good friend,

You don't want people to interrupt you.

You just may sort of look,

Oh yeah,

Please call me later and go back with your best friend.

That is what we call like when you get focused on the object of your meditation and nothing can really much take you away from it,

You're enjoying it.

There's so many times in meditation,

I hope it's happened to you,

If it doesn't happen to you yet,

I hope it happened to you soon,

But you're meditating there and the bell goes or something,

So signals it's time to get out of meditation and you see just you can't do it.

You just don't want to do it,

Your mind won't let you do it.

You just carry on meditating,

Have a wonderful time.

During this retreat,

If that happens to you at any time,

You're enjoying your meditation and somebody like me comes along and says,

Okay,

It's now time to come out of your meditation,

This session is over,

Please ignore me totally and just carry on meditating.

If it's your lunch time,

Don't worry about that,

You can always eat something later on.

The point is that when the mind is still and happy,

Please stay with it.

Imagine,

Just imagine for a moment if the Buddha under the Bodhi tree on his enlightenment day had someone ring the bell,

Bang,

Okay,

Buddha time to get up,

Time to have some lunch,

Time to do something,

There would be no Buddha anymore.

When the meditation starts working,

Enjoy it to the max.

It's like you're with a best friend,

Time just goes by,

Doesn't have much of a meaning.

You have a lot of wonderful times and you learn to love the meditation and loving the meditation,

Seeing the joy,

The value,

The happiness in it,

That is how you focus the mind.

It's a natural occurrence when you stop searching for things,

You go deep and deep inside your lotus,

Your body and mind.

There's incredible experiences,

Wonderful states of mind,

You enjoy it so much that you get great insights but other people see it.

That's one of the wonderful things about meditation,

People say,

Oh yeah but this is so selfish,

I'm just taking seven days out of my life,

I should be doing duties to all these other people and look,

When your meditation finishes,

After seven days you go back to your family,

You go back to work or whatever it is you're doing in life,

When you go back there and your boss at work,

Your family,

They see you,

Oh you're such a more happy,

Wise,

Peaceful person.

It happens so many times that when people,

Oh they come on retreats,

The benefits are huge.

Just again,

I think I told Ayodhya Chanda last week that one of the fellows came on my last retreat,

Which I did in November in Jhana Grove.

He's a local fellow but he had a brain cancer,

He had a big tumor in his brain,

Sort of 10 months ago and he had a choice,

Oh what should I do,

Take the operation and be on steroids for the rest of my life,

That's what he told me,

Decide to meditate instead.

And he came to see me last November with a big smile on his face,

So his chew was gone.

The neurosurgeon doesn't know where it went to,

He doesn't need the operation anymore,

In remission.

And that's happened so many times,

It's not a miracle,

It's the fact that this meditation can relax you so much,

You're having great sort of health afterwards.

So those are just some of the benefits and the happiness,

Your productivity,

Overcoming things like,

Please excuse me,

But every now and again I confuse the words for these psychological conditions.

I think it's ADHD,

I sometimes say by mistake ACDC,

Apparently that was a rock band,

ACDC.

But anyway,

Many of the psychological problems of life tend to disappear too.

If you can see some happiness and beauty and meaning in everything.

One of our problems in our modern age,

Especially times of COVID,

That people have lost a lot of their meaning in their life,

They can't go where they want to,

The family life is not so easy,

You can't visit people they love very much,

People die in other countries and you can't attend their funeral services.

So it's challenged what we take as the meaning of our life.

And to me,

I think that's always a wonderful thing we can exploit to get a more fuller meaning of life.

By that I mean,

We can understand where beauty truly lies,

And how we can share that beauty just with a bit of peace and happiness and kindness inside of ourselves.

So we can actually show by our own behavior,

Just how that beauty is spread in this world.

That's one of the reasons why I love to see kids,

That's why sometimes you go to these ceremonies and blessings and start to see people's kids running all over the place.

There's a sense they know very little,

But they understand a lot.

And these kids,

I remember telling one of my students,

They wanted to go on a meditation retreat,

But didn't really have the time.

And the kids told,

Mommy,

Mommy,

Mommy,

You have to go to meditation.

Oh,

I can't,

I haven't got the time,

I'm too tired,

There's so many other things to do,

Said mommy.

And the kids said,

Mommy,

You must go to meditation.

Kids were only sort of under 10,

8,

9 or something.

And mommy said,

Why?

And the kids so honest,

So articulate,

They said,

Because mommy,

You're a much nicer mommy when you come home from meditation.

Little things like that,

That's how we practice compassion.

Even the kids understood a little bit of meditation makes their mother,

Makes her father kinder.

You're actually spreading kindness in this world,

Not just by chanting,

But by doing something about it,

Making yourself a kinder,

Happier,

More peaceful person,

And thereby spreading the Dharma far and wide.

So that's a little talk to begin with.

What we're going to be talking about during this meditation retreat.

And all the time,

Doesn't matter how your mind is,

Please value the contents of this moment,

Give it kindness.

It's a kindness which will allow you to be with this moment,

And allow you to go inside of it.

And inside of it,

You'll find freedom.

Freedom not by getting rid of things or accumulating things,

Freedom of going inside of things.

The center of the storm of life,

In there is where peace and wisdom lie.

Bless our retreat.

And you might think it's just peacefulness,

But after you have a really good meditation,

You get so much energy.

That's one of the reasons why we call this retreat,

Fizz and Sparkle.

Kind of right there,

Have a sparkling mind,

A fizzy mind.

It fizzes with kindness,

It fizzes with insight,

Fizzes with wisdom.

And those sorts of states of mind we share with the people we pass by in our life,

And every moment.

What a wonderful gift that is.

So it's not just about you,

It's about everybody.

Everybody you'll meet in life.

A little by little,

You find it's such an easy thing to do.

You actually just don't do it.

You just sit here,

Be quiet.

Don't try and get things.

Be kind.

And all these wonderful things happen.

So there we go.

That's the introduction talk.

Reviews

How very motivating 💜