What Is Meditation? | Ajahn Brahm

Ajahn Brahm talks about the importance of sitting down to meditate and the wholesome results this simple practice can have for us. Being aware of the benefits will make us want to meditate more. It's not about doing something special, but more about learning to inspire us to meditate and to be peaceful. This will also enable us to serve more and to do good in our lives. Ajahn Brahm is a popular Buddhist teacher to a growing international audience of people keen to learn meditation.

Transcript

Good afternoon,

Good meditators,

And welcome to this third day of our retreat,

Fizzy and Sparkling.

And for that third day that sometimes that people have managed to get themselves into the retreat schedule,

Things are starting to obviously hopefully become a little bit more comfortable for you,

But sometimes people as I chanda said can easily get bored.

And one of the reasons they get bored is because they don't know just how to develop their perception of of delight and beauty in the mind.

And this is one of the greatest things of meditation that after a while you start to,

I mean,

Enjoy it,

Really enjoy it.

I still recall the very first meditation I ever did was over in Cambridge in the university and it was in 1969.

I just joined the Buddhist Society in Cambridge and a monk was just giving a five minute meditation.

That's all five minutes.

There's nothing about mindfulness or anything.

Mindfulness was not considered special in those days in 1969,

Which is meditation becoming peaceful.

And even just after five minutes of just meditation it felt good.

That's all I could say about it.

It felt wonderful.

And I was like,

This is really nice and easy and beautiful.

Why not do some more of it?

So you started doing some more of it.

But then after a while,

I remember one or two years,

But I started,

Oh yeah,

I've been there,

Done that.

It's quite boring,

I thought.

And I was doing less and less meditation.

And it did happen.

I was in a coffee shop somewhere and I,

To this day,

I don't know where it was,

Whether it was in Europe or overseas.

But anyway,

In that coffee shop,

I was having a cup of coffee,

Just being friendly with everybody.

And the fellow I was just sitting next to,

He was from a Frenchman.

We started talking about spirituality and then meditation.

And then I said that I used to meditate really a lot in the old days.

And that's what you talk about.

You've only been meditating for a couple of years,

You say in the old days.

But then he said,

Why don't you carry on meditating now?

I said,

Well,

You know,

It's okay.

But there's other things that a young man could be doing.

And that's what I was up to,

The usual young man pursuits.

And then he told me,

He said,

Well,

Why don't you at the end of every meditation,

Just do a little comparison between how you were when you started and how you are after the meditation,

Only doing 30 or 40 minutes.

And I decided to try that.

And it was just wonderful advice.

Because there I found that every meditation was really worthwhile.

Even the ones I thought were not so good.

It was still after I just sat down and was,

In those days,

I was trying to meditate,

Trying to learn how to be peaceful.

But no matter what happened,

I was always more peaceful at the end of even a 30,

40 minute meditation.

And that gave me the encouragement to keep on going.

And I might like telling this story at this time of the retreat,

Because sometimes if you haven't done much meditation before,

Or even if you have done meditation before a lot,

Sometimes you think,

Oh,

It's not really getting anywhere.

Maybe I could be using my time for something else.

But no,

Just check how your meditation is actually progressing.

And you always feel so much more peaceful,

So much more happy after each meditation.

You don't need to be a very skillful or deep meditator to know that.

That's also why,

There are so many times,

I'm just trying to think of one of the many stories.

Like we have this little meditation group in those old days when we could actually meet together,

Close to our monastery.

And I was in a hospital in Armidale group.

And there was one lady who came there one evening and at the very end of the session,

She told me,

Ajahn Brahm,

I never wanted to come to this meditation class this evening.

Had a busy day at work.

But my children,

There were children,

Only about eight or nine or something.

My two children said,

Mummy,

Are you going to meditation tonight?

I said,

No,

I've had a busy day,

I'm tired.

Mummy,

You must go to meditation tonight.

I don't feel like it.

Mummy,

You must go to meditation tonight.

And of course,

The mummy said,

Why?

The two children said with such sincerity,

Because mummy,

You're a much nicer mummy,

When you come back from meditation.

And that really got to her because she never realized what it was doing to her.

But the children could.

If it really is something positive,

You may not be able to see it yourself,

But your relations and friends,

And even the people you work with,

They do notice it very clearly.

And so that gives you this encouragement,

Encouragement to keep on going and to allow the mind to become more and more still.

Of course,

One of the advantages of a longish retreat,

And this is seven days,

Is that you have all the time to develop the mind.

It doesn't mean you have to spend all the time sitting cross-legged and just doing some sort of usual way of meditation,

You do this and then you do that,

Then you do something else.

A lot of time is just learning just how to be peaceful,

What is peaceful.

And that's one of the reasons why that I often introduce that you're by yourselves on this retreat,

But many of you,

I'm sure,

Have some very beautiful places you can just go to,

And even just even looking out through a window,

Just seeing the snow on the ground,

Or seeing the clouds in the tree,

Clouds in the sky,

Or seeing the night sky,

Places where it's quiet,

Peaceful,

And it inspires you.

Now that is an important part of meditation,

To inspire oneself,

To calm oneself.

By calming oneself and inspiring oneself,

You can find so much peace and happiness,

Especially,

I meant those words intentionally to go together,

Peace and happiness,

And that just,

It feeds the mind.

Often,

Sometimes Ajahn Chah would teach me this,

He would say that just like the body needs food to stay healthy,

Your mind just does need peace and kindness,

This meditation to stay healthy.

And that's what reminds me of the story behind this,

That I was there at the time when a professor from Sweden,

From one of the universities in Stockholm,

Came and many great teachers in Asia,

Not just in Thailand,

In Burma,

In Sri Lanka,

In India,

Because he'd heard,

Or rather the government had heard about meditation,

And the government in Sweden wanted to find out what does meditation mean,

What is meditation?

And so the government sponsored this professor to go to every famous meditation teacher he could find there in Asia and ask the same four questions.

And those four questions were,

What is meditation?

Why do you meditate?

How do you meditate?

And what do you get out of meditation?

They'd ask some very,

Very famous gurus and teachers these questions,

And they would come to Wat Ba Pong in northeast Thailand to ask Ajahn Chah.

And because he was representing the Swedish government,

Ajahn Chah received him,

And with great respect,

And had to have a translator translate these questions into Thai.

When Ajahn Chah realized this was from the Swedish government and they understood what the questions were,

Ajahn Chah asked for a piece of paper and a pen.

And again this is the first time we'd ever seen Ajahn Chah get a piece of paper and a pen,

Or a pencil I think it was,

To answer these questions.

And he was an actor in that sense that we knew that something interesting was going to happen,

And of course it did.

And he wrote down the answers from in Thai,

In pencil,

Gave it to the translator,

And of course the translator read them,

Waited about five minutes laughing,

And then translated the questions into English because a professor could understand English.

And the translator said,

Your answer to the first question,

So what is meditation?

The great Master Ajahn Chah's answer is,

What is eating?

Second question,

How do you meditate?

His answer is,

How do you eat?

Why do you meditate?

The answer is,

Why do you eat?

The fourth question,

What do you get out of meditation?

The answer is,

What do you get out of eating?

And the professor was really upset,

He said,

I can't take that back to my government.

And Ajahn Chah was very,

Very stubborn,

He said,

Well that's what I'm giving you,

Take it or leave it.

But afterwards,

It's a beautiful simple way of us answering a very deep question.

What is meditation?

Why do you meditate?

How do you meditate?

What do you get out of meditating?

And answering it with,

What is eating?

Eating is getting enough energy and health for your body so that your body can perform,

You can live,

And it can do many services to your friends,

Family,

Loved ones,

And to society.

You can actually do something good in this world,

That's why we eat.

So why do we meditate?

Same thing.

So it can really make a very good,

Powerful,

Soft impact on this world and have a much better way for people to behave together.

And someone just told me this story yesterday,

It was a friend of Mumbudu,

Told me this story,

It's a lovely little story,

That one of his friends was,

She was taking her two children to McDonald's to give them a treat,

And then she saw a group of indigenous young kids,

And they were being chased by some bigger kids who had some sticks,

They were really going to give them a beating or something,

I'm not sure why.

But the two kids,

You know,

Who were being chased,

Dived under this woman's car,

Right underneath it to hide.

And so she had to face these other four bigger kids who had sticks,

And she was really scared because,

You know,

They're big kids,

And she could really get into big trouble.

But instead she said,

Okay,

I'm going into McDonald's to get something to eat,

You want to come too?

I'll give you a happy meal each,

I'll pay for it all.

And the indigenous kids,

What is really better,

To,

You know,

To chase each other and beat each other up,

Or to just to go and get a happy meal?

They all agreed,

Yeah,

Happy meal is much better.

So they all went into McDonald's,

A whole group of them,

And she paid a happy meal for them.

And that meant there was no violence,

And they all got on together afterwards.

Simple pieces of wisdom,

Like generosity and kindness and non-discrimination for all,

Was a wonderful thing.

And so she actually solved a very difficult problem there,

Which could have been very violent and very,

Very dangerous for everybody.

But anyway,

That's what meditation,

Spirituality meditation does.

It does create a happier,

More peaceful world,

Which is one of the wonderful things why we do it.

So you see its benefit for you and for all the people you live with.

And number two,

It's the,

How do you meditate?

How do you eat?

Does anyone ever told you how to eat?

Yeah,

We've got manners,

You know,

Just so we don't slurp our tea.

We don't burp,

But you know,

The older you get,

The harder it is not to burp sometimes.

So it's true.

Anyway,

So you always have the,

Okay,

Please forgive me,

Or I apologize or something.

But then how do you meditate?

Are all your meditations going to be great?

Of course not.

But we do it the best we possibly can.

And we also have a little bit of etiquette for meditation.

So the etiquette for meditation,

If you do have digestive problems,

As I say to people when they meditate at all together,

I say,

Please,

If you do have wind,

You've met too many baked beans,

Please don't sit in the middle of the hall,

The front of the hall.

Sit at the back with your back to the wall.

Otherwise you might asphyxiate many of the other people who are right behind you.

But no,

The etiquette of meditation is etiquette with your body.

Don't abuse your body,

Don't force the body.

Don't sort of decide you have to beat your personal best.

That's not what we meditate for.

It's not to actually increase our sense of achievement,

To increase our ego.

It is to disappear.

So the reason why we eat is so the hunger disappears.

So the feelings,

You need some more energy inside,

Just disappear,

Vanish.

You don't eat the food which is going to upset your tummy.

That's counterproductive.

So little by little we learn just how not to meditate in a way which upsets our mind or upsets our body.

So little by little we know how to meditate.

What do we get out of meditation?

What's the purpose of it?

And of course it is a healthy body.

It's why we eat food.

It's a healthy mind.

It's why we meditate.

And after a while if you stop meditating you find that the mind is like missing something.

It's like hungry.

It's like deprived.

Then you make too many mistakes.

You get so sucked into the difficulties of life.

You can't sort of let go of them and see them in perspective.

Little by little you find the more you meditate the more healthy your spirituality is.

It's food for the heart,

Food for the mind.

And you can feel that.

I often have many,

Many other things to do in my life.

I'm just a spiritual director of so many stuff,

Way too many.

But what I do whenever you have to do many,

Many things all the same time that you learn how to meditate,

To let go and to energize the mind,

To give it some joy and happiness.

Of course I've been doing this for such a long time.

I know how to do it which means that I can always get some energy at any time which you really need it and to really do the best job I possibly can to spiritually empower the mind to make it really healthy.

Just like an athlete is performing an Olympic games or something that they can learn just how to do their very,

Very best for their country by having a good state of mind and also learning how to meditate or even,

And this is a simile which is very easy to understand and it's a great simile for meditation but just how it relates to our ordinary daily life.

And that is a time when I had a lot of stress as a young man because of exams at university.

And I love telling this story not just because how powerful it worked for me but also just how it relates you know to meditation to your real life and the life of your friends and your family.

Now was the time doing final examinations in theoretical physics and in those days,

In those days at the university that everything went down to the final set of exams.

Everything else you've done in the whole three years counted for nothing.

Just one set of exams,

You passed,

You failed,

You did extremely well or not well at all,

All due to one set of exams.

That's why they call them the final exams.

And in natural science as I remember in those days there were six exams,

Sorry there were 12 exams over six days,

Three hours in the morning,

Three hours in the afternoon,

Monday,

Tuesday,

Wednesday,

Thursday,

Friday and Saturday in a row.

I said it was gross.

Now that amount of stress doing it all together and it was very emotionally hard.

So anyway,

So I had the advantage because I knew how to meditate.

So what I did every day instead of having lunch,

I had dinner in those days and breakfast of course.

Nice big breakfast and nice big dinner in the evening and lunchtime I just went to my room,

Sat on a seat on the floor and just crossed my legs and meditated for half an hour.

This is actually what happened.

I remember almost every day was the same.

You sit down and the first thing you'd notice was you started thinking of the past.

The past for me at that time was a morning exam.

Did I answer all the questions correctly on fundamental particle physics?

Really fun subject.

Actually was very fun.

I'm just going to go off on a tangent here.

I love going off on tangents because I don't plan my talks as you know.

The tangent was that fundamental particle physics.

Why was we really concerned about fundamental particles,

About how stuff is made up?

Because the idea actually came from the Greeks.

They wanted to find out the fundamental particle which makes up everything in this world and they gave that a name,

Atom,

Which was come from a Greek word meaning indivisible.

You can't split it up.

So the fundamental particle but of course the atom was split by Rutherford,

A New Zealand man working in Cambridge.

That was a really big thing that you could actually split the atom and realized that the atom was not the fundamental particle from which everything was made up.

But of course that he wasn't the first person to split the atom because the atom is very closely connected.

I reckon no one's actually disproved this yet.

If you can't,

Great.

I'll stop talking about it.

But there's another word very similar called the Atma.

And what does that mean?

That's from the India.

That's the indivisible,

The essence of the human mind or the soul or whatever they wish to call it.

Is that really the fundamental particle which makes up our inner world,

Our spiritual life,

The Atma?

And of course there was somebody who split that up way before Rutherford.

He split it up 2,

500 years ago and that was the Buddha.

Split it up into canvas,

These parts of existence,

What I call the components of existence,

Bodhi,

Vedana,

Sannyasankara,

Vinyana.

So there's something similar there.

That's why I like the idea of fundamental particle physics but instead of particles in the mind of the thing which your will and your consciousness is,

What are they?

What's the fundamental part of you?

Anyway,

So during that exam in the morning at lunch time,

I started thinking,

Did I do things right?

Did I answer the questions correctly?

And what a complete waste of time that is.

The exam paper is in,

You cannot change it.

Good,

Bad,

It's done.

You've just got to accept it.

And also I realized I was wasting energy.

I had another exam coming in quantum physics in the afternoon and so I needed to keep my mind energized so I let go of the past.

The next thing I noticed was the future.

After an exam in quantum physics or something,

Have I done enough research,

Enough revision?

Should I pick up the books and learn a bit more?

I said,

No,

That's not what I'm supposed to be doing.

I need to energize my mind.

I had my knowledge,

Experience was enough,

No one needs to be still to get some energy and clarity back into my brain.

So I let go of the future.

It wasn't that hard to do.

For me the future was the afternoon exam.

The past was the morning exam because they were the most vital parts of my day and so I could let them go.

And the next thing I noticed that I was shaking.

Now that's not normally a nervous person but that day I was very nervous to point my hands and body was shaking and I never realized it before because I was just too worried about the past or the future.

But now I can see it is not quite easy just to relax the body.

When you're mindful of this body you know that kindness works and you can relax it.

Come on,

Just no worries at the moment.

Once you relax the body then that calmed down.

The last thing I noticed was the dullness in my drain.

It was like as I wrote I think in the book it was like similarly like having a tea bag.

You've already used it and that's all you've got left to make your second cup of tea,

An old used tea bag with all the oomph taken out.

And that's what my brain felt like.

The three hours of doing maths,

Doing sums and now I had another exam coming up soon.

But I also noticed that when you are aware of the problem and just stay with it and be kind to it,

The energy comes back into your brain.

I was actually re-energizing myself.

I did that every lunchtime,

Simple meditation.

Let go of the past,

Let go of the future,

Be aware of your body,

Relax it and then go into the mind and just stay with it and see the energy come back again.

Which meant when I came out,

It's only half an hour,

That's all the time I had.

When I came out after half an hour I was relaxed,

Not worried and energized.

And this is no exaggeration,

After the exams not beforehand,

When the exams were finished some of my friends came up and they said that I was the only student who went into the exam rooms smiling.

They thought I was cheating.

I said I was not cheating,

I just knew how to do exams.

I've taught that so often to so many other schools.

Even recently I taught that method to the Jewish school here in Perth before they did their university entrance exams.

I got a lovely letter afterwards from the,

This is no exaggeration,

I got a lovely letter from the principal of the Jewish school.

So thank you very much for teaching our kids how to pass the exams because that year their school came top of the rankings in the whole of Western Australia.

Now that's a simple thing that when we have a anxious moment,

We have a test or an interview or doing some exam for something or other,

Learning how to let go of the past and let go of the future,

See our body and relax our body so it's not shaking,

It's not tense,

It's not tight.

And then going into our mind and learning how to relax that,

It creates so much stillness.

And clarity and joy.

I was smiling naturally,

Wasn't doing that on purpose,

It was just what happens.

So this is actually why we meditate and how we meditate,

How do you eat?

How do you eat?

Again we do have the cultural sort of etiquette of eating but how we eat is a natural thing.

How much we eat and people say how long should you meditate for every day?

And the answer is how long should you eat every day?

Very similar.

How much filter energy do you need?

And do you want some more?

So then just meditate some more.

And your posture,

When you're eating,

I was always tall when I was young,

You sit at the table to eat,

But then started sitting on the sofa to watch the TV or listen to something.

And these days people eat all over the place,

Any old posture,

As long as they're comfortable,

As long as they can digest well.

And little by little we chew mindfully,

And actually we can feel the food in our mouth,

And we can then actually digest it.

Sometimes,

And I tell this to people,

If you go out with someone to a nice restaurant,

Please when you get your food,

Please tell them to be quiet,

Not to talk when you're eating,

Because the food is delicious.

Somebody spent a lot of time cooking that food for you,

And so you want to just enjoy it as much as possible.

And if they're talking to you,

Then you're not aware of what you're putting in your mouth and in your tummy.

So if you've got someone who always likes talking a lot,

When you go out with them for lunch or for dinner,

Just go to a rubbish fast food restaurant,

Because it doesn't matter what you're putting in your mouth,

You can't even taste it.

But if it's a nice restaurant,

Tell them to be quiet so you can really enjoy it.

And of course that becomes part of our meditation practice.

Now you're on a retreat now,

Many of you by yourself,

Even if you have somebody with you on this retreat,

Please be quiet when you're eating so you can really taste the food.

It's amazing what happens.

I always like telling people that after I did a nine-day retreat,

Things like the person nine-day retreat here,

Just went into my cave and just stayed there and people bought me some food every now and again.

But I remember once that retreat was over,

Then breakfast time,

First time off the retreat,

And then somebody gave me some baked beans for breakfast.

I remember you're just so refined,

Your awareness was so strong.

I just put one,

Honestly,

A single baked bean in my mouth.

It's not very big.

And the taste was incredible.

I just put it in there,

Close my eyes,

And just the combination,

It's only a single baked bean,

Tiny.

From the tomato sauce which was on the top,

The sweetness of the tomato,

It's salty,

Nice,

It's texture,

It's flavor,

You could taste everything.

And that was like a five-star chef had made that baked bean,

Even though it just come from a can,

It's just been eaten up.

And nevertheless,

You could taste so much of that.

It was incredible,

It's so joyful.

Then this is why that when we start meditating and extending that meditation to other things we're doing during this retreat,

It really takes off and you start to enjoy it to the max.

A couple of days ago,

I did say something about walking meditation,

But I didn't really go into it that fully.

I think I want to say a few words about it now.

When you're doing the walking meditation in your room,

Not just sitting,

You find a nice space.

In those old days,

I used to spend some time in hotels all over the world,

Teaching retreats,

Giving talks and places.

And the hotels were great because they had an air-clock,

I could get the right temperature.

And just the design of ordinary hotel rooms was so much the same.

The front door and you have the toilets and showers room,

And then you go a bit deeper into the room and you get your bed.

And then you go to the end of the room,

You get the window.

That was long enough to do a meditation path from the front door to the end of the room and back again,

Not that long,

But long enough to really get some really nice meditation coming up.

Again,

You don't go thinking about things,

You want to feel your sensation of your feet on the carpet or on the tiles,

Whatever you have there.

And hands in front or behind doesn't really matter,

So you don't keep moving them.

And you start feeling the sensations in your feet.

What is it like just to move one foot?

Even right now,

You've got your eyes closed,

Great.

If you're looking at the screen,

That's okay too.

Lift one foot,

Lift your left foot up right now.

What does that feel like?

And hold it while it's up.

Now very gently,

Put it back down on the floor.

How did that feel?

You're becoming aware of sensations in your body and the lower body.

Just probably from the bottom of the thighs and knees and the calves and the feet themselves,

You get to know what it feels like.

So when you're doing the walking meditation,

That's what you do.

You're just aware of the movement of the legs as you do one step.

You don't deliberately do it fast or deliberately do it slow,

But for most people it's quite natural.

But once you start becoming aware of the movement of the feet,

There is so much going on there.

Like I could see so many different flavors just in one baked bean and they were all incredible.

You can feel so many different movements of just one left leg as it starts to walk.

Hundreds of them,

Thousands of them.

And the story I like saying because this is one of the best times I did walking meditation when I was just a young monk in that room where we just do walking meditation,

Half an hour to do about 15 meters,

Half an hour to do 15 meters,

One five,

Coming back again.

And I knew that it was half an hour each because I don't know why they do this in big halls in Thailand.

They had a grandfather clock which chimed every quarter hour.

So it was noisy but I didn't mind that.

But nevertheless I remember just doing this once and going so slow,

Being so into the meditation.

And that was a story when I'd forgotten that I was supposed to go to some ceremony.

So this monk was sent to come and get me.

And now it's easy to get somebody who's asleep and wake them up and get them to go to something or you know if they're reading or something.

But you try to get somebody out of meditation it's a difficult thing to get their attention.

Because when I was doing my eyes were down on the ground,

Looking at the ground two meters in front of me.

I was just lifting the foot and there was so much going on there.

It was totally filling my mind with all these amazing sensations.

And when they asked or I could hear it was like in a distance,

Brahma Wang Shou,

Brahma Wang Shou.

Like someone calling you from about 20 meters away.

Then I realized they weren't 20 meters away,

They were almost shouting in my ear.

But that's what it felt like when you're getting stood in meditation.

All that sound was just going a long way away from you.

And I realized I better come out of the walking meditation.

I've got some duties to do.

But it was so difficult with all the greatest respect in the world,

You know,

As a senior monk and realizing I was at fault,

I had to move my head.

I used to move your head from looking at the floor to turning to the right and looking at the person before you spoke to them.

There's so many different muscles in the neck and the rest of the body which had to move actually to turn your head around.

And it was fascinating.

It took me about two or three minutes just to turn my head around.

I just couldn't do anything quicker.

It was just you were in sort of the first gear and you just couldn't move that first gear up to second,

Third or fourth all that easily.

And when I did meet his eyes and turn around,

What?

That's like a stupid fellow but because the people knew what meditation does to you,

They understood.

So we have to go to a dani and I started getting my body and mind to work a bit faster.

That's what happens.

But even walking meditation can be so beautiful,

So wonderful.

Sounds like thousands of miles away.

You're in this body and then if you wanted to use that stillness and that joy,

That enjoyment of being still,

Then you can just sit down if you wish and take that meditation even further in deeper.

The walking and sitting,

Sitting and walking or even if you want to lie down,

Lie down in a position where you don't usually fall asleep.

Because your body is now really comfortable and then just make sure the body is at ease like I've been doing in the guided meditations.

Then go into silence,

Stillness,

Present moment.

When the breath comes to you,

The nice thing is you're enjoying all of this.

You're enjoying it so much it does become effortless.

Effort destroys joy.

Effort and striving is I'm going to give up happiness now.

It's going to come later on you hope.

But the best joy comes when you relax to the max.

In this moment you don't want anything in the whole world.

You're just watching a foot rise up,

Just watching the silence inside.

You're not choosing what you're watching.

You're fully aware and the body gets so at peace it starts to vanish and the mind is also at peace.

It doesn't want anything.

It's like you're going on this great expedition to a beautiful forest.

You don't know what it means.

You don't need to know what it means.

You're enjoying every moment of it.

You're discovering.

We're going into just the caves.

That's why I always used to like caves.

Number one really big cave over in Malaysia.

There's quite a few of them which I went into and it was like going into your mind.

There's beautiful limestone edifices and waterfalls and it was quiet and I love those things because they were simple,

Restrained.

You couldn't see far distances because you're in the opposite direction.

You're looking inwards,

Inwards and inwards and inwards and you find some beautiful formations.

And then when you do that you have so much fun and joy.

So meditation becomes a great exploration of your inner world and the inner world of others as well because they're the same.

Little by little the deeper you go the less differences between us.

The mind has got no gender.

It's like neutral but it's beyond gender.

That's why I'm not talking about the brain,

I'm talking about the mind.

It isn't even not even a human being,

The mind shared by heavenly beings and everything else.

This mind when you really get to know it becomes delightful.

They call it the Prabhasa-Rijita,

The radiant mind.

Then after a while the radiant mind gets so soft it too disappears.

Freedom.

Wow.

That's why we eat,

That's why we meditate,

To be free.

Anyway that's a little talk on how to eat,

How to eat meditation.

I never think I'm going to talk about all sorts of stuff.

I hope the cover is useful.

In the afternoon talks of the end of the sutta classes that's when I get a bit more formal.

So I describe how the Buddha taught meditation.

Well those are little things,

Inspiration and joy.

Please understand that the meditation is a natural process.

You don't have to do things,

Just get out of the way and let it happen.

Reviews

Lovely

What a fabulous no nonsense talk. Straight from the heart and into my heart, that’s how it works. Lovely, feel totally relaxed, smiley and out of my own way. I found peace just then, thank you!🙏❤️🌿