Namotassa Bhagavato Arhato Sama Sambuddhassa Namotassa Bhagavato Arhato Sama Sambuddhassa Sabhapapasa akharanam kusulasa upasampada sacchitta pariyodhapanam ettaṃ buddhānasasanam These are ancient words,
Advice to the Buddha,
To his disciples.
They go like this.
To abstain from all unskillful acts,
To perform skillful acts,
To cleanse one's own mind.
This is the teaching of the awakened ones.
And I started with this because I feel it gives a good summary of what this practice is all about.
I wanted to begin this talk with talking a little bit about why,
What is the purpose of this meditation,
The practice from the Buddhist perspective.
Because there's lots of types of meditation and there's lots of ways of going about this practice in the world.
But I wanted to speak a little bit about why a Buddhist does what they do in terms of this practice.
Then I'm going to talk a little bit about the right attitude of a meditator.
Talk about light,
Practice your own,
How to incorporate the practice into your daily life,
And how to practice off the cushion before ending.
So,
To start out,
Some of you might know the Buddhist stories,
Some of you might not.
I'm not going to go into a lot of detail in this section.
But old age,
Sickness and death put the Buddha on his path to trying to find a way out of this.
Trying to find a way out of old age,
Sickness and death.
And when he became awakened and he came back,
He introduced to us these four noble truths.
The first one,
Everybody probably has heard as,
Well,
Life is suffering.
It's not quite.
It's a very common.
.
.
He said life is suffering,
It's so pessimistic.
Actually,
What he said was that there is what's called Dukkha.
And this Dukkha is things that are difficult to bear in life.
What's difficult to bear?
Birth,
Old age,
Sickness,
Death,
Pain,
Lamentation,
Grief,
Despair.
Not getting what we want.
Having to deal with people,
Places and experiences we don't like.
Having to be separated from people,
Places and experiences we do like.
So,
He explained this is one of the main problems in our existence.
And so,
That was the first noble truth.
The second noble truth is the origin.
And that origin,
The reason why there's Dukkha,
Is because of our craving,
Our thirst.
The mind's never-ending thirst to appease itself with sensual pleasures.
And of course,
Then,
Now that we know what the problem was and what the origin is,
Is there a way out?
And the Buddha said he did find that way out.
That's Nibbana,
Or Nirvana.
And once we know that there's a way out,
How do we follow it?
How do we get there?
That's the fourth noble truth.
The Eightfold Path.
And so,
The Noble Eightfold Path can be viewed as a toolbox.
It's a wonderful,
It's the Buddha basically giving us a nice wrapped gift and handing it to us and saying,
If you want to follow this path,
If you want to end old age,
Sickness and death and suffering,
This is the path that you follow.
And I'm not going to go into too much detail about that path,
But it's split in three ways.
The first is Sila.
Banthe G spoke to you guys when you took the precepts,
And Banthe Paniratana spoke to you a little bit about that yesterday.
Sila is living by virtuous precepts.
And these are,
In Buddhism,
They're not commandments,
They're not rules.
When you think of a rule,
A rule is something that is put upon you by society.
A precept is something that you take on of your own free will.
To live by these,
And so there's three.
There's what we would call right action,
Right speech,
And right livelihood.
So by our speech and our actions and how we live our lives,
Doing so in skillful ways that are beneficial to yourself and others and not harmful.
The other section is Samadhi.
So the first section covers what the Buddha's advice in the beginning was,
Right?
To abstain from unskillful deeds,
To do skillful deeds.
The second section covers the cleansing of one's own mind.
And these are right effort,
Right mindfulness,
And right concentration.
This is practicing our meditation,
Practicing our contemplations.
And then when we have these two modes of practice,
This Sila and Samadhi,
That allows us to develop wisdom.
Our right view and our right intention.
Right intention is having a mind that instead of having ill will,
Has good will.
Instead of having greed and covetousness,
Has renunciation,
Feelings of thoughts of letting go.
Instead of having cruelty,
Has thoughts of non-cruelty.
And so that's what a Buddhist,
When they practice,
As I said yesterday,
When I talked to you guys about mindfulness of eating,
It's much more than about just sitting down on a cushion and following our breath.
It's about making the practice our livelihood.
And many people come to this practice through experiences and understandings,
Often like old age sickness and death,
Things that they've experienced that cause them to become seekers,
Cause them to start to try to see and to understand this reality that they live in,
In their experience.
And so what we're working with,
As we're sitting down,
As we're doing anything that we're doing in terms of our practice,
We're working with our craving,
And with our craving comes greed,
Hatred,
And delusion.
So greed is,
You can think of it as the mind of attachment.
Greed is the I like mind.
I want this,
I like this,
I want more of it,
I don't want anybody to take it from me,
And I want to have it forever.
Hatred is the I dislike mind,
The mind of aversion.
This is the mind that says,
I don't want to have anything to do with this,
I don't want to,
I don't want to abide with it,
I don't want to,
I want to push it away,
I want to hide from it,
Get it away from me.
Those of you as you've started to meditate,
You might see that oftentimes in our mind,
That's where our mind's going.
Our mind's going back and forth,
Likes,
Dislikes,
Past,
Future.
And so the third aspect of this is delusion.
You can think of this as the I am mind.
This is the mind that we delude ourselves into taking everything as a permanent personal being.
Like everything,
This person did something to me,
I'm offended.
So this is the I am mind.
These three things,
Greed,
Hatred,
And delusion,
Are what we're going to see when we're trying to meditate.
Greed,
Hatred,
And delusion are what the Bante Panjaratana spoke about,
The hindrances.
Working with the hindrances goes directly against this greed,
Hatred,
And delusion.
And indeed,
The Buddha,
His definition for becoming awakened is letting go of greed,
Hatred,
And delusion.
An awakened being has no greed,
Hatred,
And delusion in their mind.
So that is the ultimate ending of this practice.
Following this noble eightfold path,
Fully and completely,
Is for the ending of greed,
Hatred,
And delusion.
Greed,
Hatred,
And delusion are what we call underlying habitual tendencies.
And when we're viewed in this way,
When we're viewed in what is an underlying habitual tendency?
We have a tendency to want to attach to things we like.
We have a tendency to want to repulse and push away things we don't like.
That's an habitual tendency.
And when we are in our practice,
When we are in the middle of it,
Watching our mind,
Observing,
Following the breath,
Or whatever we normally do as our normal practice,
And the things are coming to our mind,
The thoughts,
Feelings,
All of that,
We're working and we're understanding,
We're coming to know deeply our habitual tendencies,
To become aware of them fully and understand them.
And when we see these things,
We can see they are harmful or skillful.
And then we can make the choice that we want to abide in these things.
We want to let them go.
To speak briefly about right effort.
Right effort is the important,
It's important in the Noble Eightfold Path in that without putting in this effort,
You can't get anywhere in the path.
And what is the effort?
The effort is directly working with your habitual tendencies.
The effort is to allowing us to practice letting go of unskillful habitual tendencies and habits and thoughts that we have in our mind.
Not allowing them to abide in our mind.
And we want to maintain good tendencies,
Good habits,
Good thoughts that we have in our mind,
And foster more good thoughts,
Good habits.
So we are working directly with trying to unskillful,
Harmful thoughts,
Habits,
Words,
Whatever we normally do.
We're trying to replace that with skillful thoughts,
Habits that are beneficial to yourself and others.
So when a Buddhist starts this practice,
When the Buddhist goes down this path,
This is the goal.
This is what they're working with.
This is why we do what we do when we're practicing in various ways.
And so the first thing I wanted to talk about was the right attitude of a meditator.
What does that mean?
That's not part of the Noble Eightfold Path.
That's not something you're going to find in the suttas.
It's actually something that I've thought about a lot.
And as people who are just starting out on your practice,
I'd like to share this with you to give you some advice and guidance in this regard.
There's a wonderful story.
It's about a monk called Sona.
Sona is a monk who's really trying hard.
He's really meditating.
He's really meditating all day and night.
He's doing all these kind of things.
And he's just not getting anywhere.
And he's tired and he's sore.
And he thinks to himself,
You know what?
Why am I doing this?
Why don't I just go and enjoy my family's wealth and not bother with this stuff anymore?
And so the Buddha heard this and the Buddha came to him and he spoke to Sona about a thing.
And he said,
Sona,
When you were a lay person,
Were you skilled at playing the vinna?
And the vinna is this ancient Indian instrument.
It's kind of like a cross between a lute and a harp.
It's a stringed instrument.
And of course,
Sona said,
Yes,
Yes,
I was skilled in that.
And so the Buddha said,
When your strings were too tight,
Were they in tune and playable?
And he says,
No,
No,
Bonte,
They weren't.
And so he says,
When your strings were too loose,
Were they in tune and playable?
And he says,
No,
Bonte,
They're not.
And he says,
Just so,
Too much tightness in your practice leads to restlessness.
Too much loose leads to laziness.
So the Buddha says to find your pitch and take up your theme.
This is an important thing to remember in your practice because it's very easy to push yourself too much,
To overdo yourselves.
And when you do that,
Many times,
Just like Sona,
You get frustrated.
Why am I doing this?
And then you let go and you quit.
So it's about a balance.
The Buddha is telling all of us to find our theme,
Take up our theme,
Find our balance.
And my balance in the practice is not the same as your balance.
This is one of the first things to understand as a meditator is to being able to understand,
Being honest with yourself and understanding your practice.
Make no mistake,
This practice is hard work.
It's the hardest thing,
In my opinion,
That you'll ever do.
I don't know of anything that's harder than observing your mind and going against the stream.
The Buddha said that this practice goes against the stream.
It goes against greed,
Hatred and delusion.
It goes against our habitual tendencies.
And if any of you have even tried to just build a habit or change a habit,
Even if it's something small,
Like learning an instrument or trying to eat less or not eat food at night or anything like that,
Or we make a New Year's resolution,
I'm going to do this,
Three weeks later we're not doing it anymore,
Or we gave up on it.
So it's not easy.
It's not easy at all.
But we do have to be able to,
Understanding that it's not easy,
Still push forward and still practice.
When the Buddha talks about his meditator,
Somebody who's meditating rightly,
He usually uses three words.
I call them Buddha's adjectives.
It's diligent,
Ardent and resolute.
What is diligence in the words of the Buddha?
The Buddha says that diligence is guarding your mind from unskillful mind states.
It's right effort.
When something unskillful comes up in our minds,
We don't want to abide by it.
We don't want to let it stay there and be the cause for us to do unskillful things from our mind and our body.
But this is a balance.
Diligence is a balance.
It's not,
I'm going to meditate all day every day.
Nobody can do that.
At least not until you're close to being a Buddha.
Maybe somebody who's that advanced can do that,
But none of us can do that.
At least maybe I'm speaking for myself.
I don't know.
So the other word,
Ardent.
Ardent is being devoted to the practice.
Really making it a priority in your life.
And I'll speak a little bit later about how that happens.
And of course,
Resolute.
This is being firm in purpose.
Understanding why you're doing this.
Why are you sitting down?
What do you hope that this practice will do?
So you're understanding.
You're being resolute in your practice.
And so the Buddha actually called diligence the root of all wholesome and skillful acts.
When you're diligent,
When you're mindful,
Unskillful things are less likely to occur.
And you just know that.
When you're paying attention,
When you're mindful,
Some of you have been meditating for like a year,
A couple years,
Maybe you see that a thought arises in your mind.
And you realize,
Well,
If I followed that thought,
You're examining the danger.
If I followed that thought,
This thought could lead to me,
Or this feeling of anger could lead to me doing this or that.
And that's not going to be helpful to me or anybody else.
So I don't want to do that.
So that's the importance of being diligent in the practice.
And Buddha said there's only one time that you can be lazy.
And that's being lazy and doing unskillful things.
Harming other people and lying and stealing and all these kind of things.
So what does a meditator need in terms of attitude?
Discipline.
You need discipline to be able to develop a consistent practice,
To be able to really not let yourself be fooled,
Right?
To be honest with your mind.
You need that discipline.
You need determination.
Because again,
This practice is not easy.
To really do this practice sincerely and fully,
You need to be determined and want to do this practice.
Persistence and perseverance.
To be able to get through the hard times.
And there will be hard times.
Most people think that when they think of meditation,
They see a picture of somebody all blissed out.
And oh my God,
It's nothing like that at all.
This is really hard.
My back hurts and my mind,
I want to have this and that and all these kind of things.
It's not easy.
And so what a meditator needs is essentially true grit.
True grit is mental toughness.
Mental toughness to be able to sit with these hard mind states.
The stuff that comes up in our meditation.
It's not always peaceful.
It's not always wonderful.
It's not easy.
So we need this true grit to be able to persevere and persist through this practice.
And to see it through.
And of course now with these qualities,
We're ready to join the military or do something really tough and all these kind of things.
But we're not done yet.
A meditator needs self-compassion.
We all just did the meta and I spoke about having meta towards ourselves.
The self-compassion allows you to maintain that balance.
Right?
Think back to Sona.
Think about the Buddha saying,
Find our theme.
Take out,
Find our pitch.
If we're always too determined and strict and go like this and all these kind of things,
We're going to burn out.
We're going to harm ourselves.
We need that balance.
So when we have compassion for ourselves,
We develop self-compassion.
In the tough times,
We can understand.
You know,
Talk to ourselves like that positive self-talk.
You're doing good.
You're doing something that's very hard.
Keep going.
Don't give up.
You know this is good for you.
You know this is good for others.
So having compassion for yourself,
Having understanding for yourself.
Not being so critical and judgmental and all these kind of things.
Self-confidence.
Self-confidence is another big one that is important for the practice.
Because you need the self-confidence to be able to take charge of your practice.
Not rely on somebody else to do the practice for you.
You need the self-confidence to understand that you are competent and good enough to do this practice.
That you have this compassion and you have all these qualities.
So self-confidence is very important in this practice.
Also important is open-mindedness.
If you come to meditation practice with a closed mind,
This is stupid.
This is not going to do anything.
I don't care what the articles say or whatever this says.
If you have a closed mind,
Your mind is done.
Your mind is closed.
There's nothing that can come into your mind.
There's nothing that can change your mind.
Coming to an open mind is very important.
Because I guarantee you if you really follow this practice,
You're going to see things in your mind that if you're not open-minded about it,
Or if you're not willing to understand and accept that yes,
This is in my mind,
It's not going to go well for you.
You're going to deny it.
You're going to think,
You know,
This happens often,
That people have very tough things that occur in their meditation or very insightful mind-opening things and they just can't accept it.
So having that open mind,
Open mind is that you have no expectations of what the practice is going to be.
You know,
You're not trying to get something.
Your mind is open as to where the practice will lead you.
And when you're able to do that,
You're also not fooling yourself.
Your mind is open.
Your mind is not,
This is exactly what I believe.
These are my views and this is how it's going to be.
And so when we're meditating and the experience may or may not match up with our preconditioned views,
And so we need that open-mindedness to be okay and to allow ourselves to really,
Sincerely accept the practice.
Also not to be afraid to experiment in this practice.
You know,
I'll give you an example.
For instance,
The Mette guided meditation that I gave you guys,
Right?
I gave you words and I gave you visuals.
The words that I gave you are words that I developed myself.
Those aren't the words that I was taught.
And just so,
In your own practice,
If the words I gave you don't work for you,
Try out different words.
Try out different visuals.
That's the importance is not being afraid to experiment with your practice.
It's part of being open-minded.
You know,
It's important too if you have a teacher or somebody who's,
You know,
Very wise and learned in meditation and if they give you advice,
That's good.
Try that advice out.
Experiment with it.
See if that advice works for you.
See if that practice works for you.
It may or it may not.
But also what it takes is not to be afraid to question.
When we investigate our minds,
We have to question our perceptions,
Our experiences.
Because then what we need to be able to is be open-minded enough not to be afraid to question even our most deeply held beliefs.
I am this.
I am that.
Your practice might show you that you're not this and that.
And if you have that fear,
That closed-mindedness,
Not being,
Don't want to question that,
Then it's going to be hard to really allow ourselves to see things as they really are.
We really hold strong to our views and our perceptions.
And as you practice more,
You might find like,
You might realize that your perceptions are so faulty.
You know,
You have a conversation with somebody.
My perception is this is how this conversation went.
Well,
The other person's perception is totally different.
Another person's perception who is listening on the sidelines,
Totally different.
You can't trust your perception.
You see that in the practice.
It's both a scary and a very freeing thing to kind of see these things.
And you have to be able to question that,
To investigate and examine these things.
And so it's not only helpful to come to the practice with these qualities,
But also the practice develops these qualities.
These qualities are developed as you practice.
And these qualities help you to develop your practice and to keep going and to really allow it to become your livelihood,
Allow it to become such a part of your life that you can't imagine your practice,
You know,
Your life without it.
To really be able to have this practice be effective.
And so the next is to keep it light and have fun.
And one of the things that sometimes people come here and they'll like write a question or they'll make a comment.
It's like,
Everybody looks miserable and they're not smiling and they're like this when they're meditating and all these kind of things.
And the best answer to that is,
Well,
Because meditation is hard.
It's not easy.
But even so,
In general in our practice,
It's very easy because of our habitual tendencies to move towards that really negative,
Critical,
Judgmental thought and feelings and see that the practice has to be this way and all these kind of things.
When you're able to keep it light and have fun,
I like to think of meditation as an adventure.
It's a grand adventure because you are delving into,
Everybody is concerned with everything that's external.
What's going on with politics and religion and what's going on on Facebook and what's going on?
Very few people turn the mirror around and look internal.
Very few.
And that's one heck of an adventure when you actually start to do that.
So you want to make sure that you keep yourself in balance in that regard.
It's okay to smile.
It's okay if you're sitting there,
You're meditating.
It's okay to smile.
It's okay to laugh at your mind.
I found that the deeper you're able to actually see how your mind works,
Your mind is the best entertainment there is.
It really is.
You watch what your mind wants to say and wants to do and you can't believe that this is coming in your mind and you just laugh because it's so silly.
And you can do that or you can be like,
Oh my God,
I can't believe that was in my mind and you accept it,
You latch onto it as yours and because of that you become embarrassed or you feel negative and critical and all these kind of things.
Part of the practice is coming to the understanding that you actually don't own these things.
A thought that arises in your mind,
You don't have to,
A thought of anger arises in your mind.
Normally what happens when somebody gets angry,
Instantly it's like they're latching to a roller coaster and they're just riding that thought,
That anger,
That feeling to the end.
When you're able to see your mind,
You're able to say,
Okay,
This anger has arisen.
You know,
This is ridiculous.
I don't need to follow this.
If I follow this anger,
It's going to lead to all these problems.
And so you can see that your mind comes up.
I'll give you a funny example.
Years ago here at a mental retreat,
And I have an issue with guided meditations,
I have trouble when somebody's doing a guided meditation,
Following it.
And one of the bontes was up here,
Bonte Silenanda was up here,
And he was doing the guided meditation,
Tired and my back was hurting,
And I was like this,
And I was at a mental retreat no less.
And all of a sudden I had in my mind,
A vision came up in my mind of me getting up and then punching Bonte Silenanda in the face.
And a person who hasn't developed in the practice,
What were they thinking?
Oh my God,
I'm such a horrible person.
Oh my God,
My mind,
I can't believe I thought that.
I'm so horrible.
I need to go and flock myself and all these kinds of things.
I had developed enough in the practice where I saw that and I literally almost burst out laughing in the middle of the meditation because I didn't have to accept it as me.
This came up in my mind and I laughed at it.
So it's important to not take yourself too serious in this.
That's where you do have to be serious.
There's also a time where you do have to,
As you develop in your practice and you,
You know,
First fight and take it easy and try not to be too harsh on yourself,
But then develop and you develop the wisdom,
You understand,
Well now I do have to be hard on myself.
I do have to push myself.
I understand at this point I have to push myself.
But until that time,
It's much better not to be hard on yourself.
It's much better to forgive yourself when you judge and you're critical of yourself and you're judging yourself.
Practice forgiving yourself.
That's important because these are all of these,
All of this,
You know,
Practicing smiling and laughing at your mind and forgiving yourself.
That all kind of sounds like kind of like silly,
You know,
Like self-help guru kind of stuff.
But what is it doing?
It's going against the habitual tendency in your mind towards negativity,
Towards aversion,
Towards aversion towards yourself and your mind and your thoughts that arise.
So you're using all of these different techniques.
And this is why it's important to experiment because you develop these techniques for yourself in your own practice.
Developing these techniques to keep that balance in your practice and keep your mind light,
Peaceful and happy.
As I said at the end of the meditation,
A peaceful,
Happy mind leads to concentration and a concentrated mind sees things as they are.
That's what you want.
You don't want to have your mind really serious like this.
You want a peaceful,
Happy,
Joyful mind because that is what's going to lead you forward.
Okay.
And how do we develop these qualities and how do we go through,
Do we learn to laugh at ourselves and all this?
How do we make the practice our own?
We have to take responsibility for our practice.
That's a big one.
It's very important because a lot of people would rather just have like a guru or a teacher,
You know,
Like I'm just going to rely totally on them.
They're just going to tell me everything that I need to do and I'm just going to go right to awakening from there.
That's very dangerous and it's not the best thing for your practice because even the Buddha,
He said the Buddha says that he can't bring you down this path.
He can only point the path.
The path is this way.
If you want to do this,
You follow the path.
And so it's important to really take responsibility for your practice and not to give away your agency towards to other people.
That doesn't mean that you don't listen to other people's wisdom who might have wise things to say about things.
That doesn't mean that.
What it means is that you are the ultimate person responsible for your actions.
You're the ultimate person responsible for your practice.
So in doing that,
That actually helps build that self-confidence as well.
It's not like,
Well,
I'm not that good of a meditator,
But thankfully I have this teacher and then something happens and they're like,
Oh,
That teacher's not so good.
Maybe I'll just find another teacher or another teacher and another teacher and another teacher.
And where have you gone in your practice?
So it's important to take that responsibility.
It's important to have what we call kalyanamitas.
These are good spiritual friends.
These are people.
They don't have to be Buddhist.
They don't have to be whatever tradition that you follow,
Buddhism or not Buddhist,
Whatever.
They don't have to be exactly who you are.
But these are people who are encouraging of your practice,
Encouraging of doing good things.
People in your life who are not trying to sabotage you doing good things for yourselves and others.
That's what a good friend is.
And that's important to have.
And for us Buddhists,
The best kalyanamita is the Buddha.
And for us here,
We take Bhante Jit as a kalyanamita,
Our abbot,
But he'll always say the Buddha is the kalyanamita.
The Buddha is the teacher.
So he's always pointing to the Buddha.
So it's good to have spiritual friends.
It's good to have people who have gone down further down the path ahead of you guys,
Who can help you.
But ultimately,
You are responsible for your own path.
And so don't be afraid to,
Again,
Try new things and personalize your practice.
If you do walking meditation,
Maybe somebody,
They teach you a certain way how to do walking meditation.
Maybe it doesn't work for you.
Maybe you're practicing walking meditation and you try something new and you say,
Oh,
Okay,
I'm going to do walking meditation this way.
I'm going to do metta this way.
Taking the practice,
You're taking responsibility for it.
You're making it your own.
And you're investigating.
You're examining.
And as you do that,
You can see,
Well,
Okay,
I tried this.
It doesn't really work.
Okay,
I'll try something else.
So you're taking responsibility for that.
You're not relying on somebody else to tell you,
Well,
Maybe you should do this or maybe you should do that.
It's very important in the practice.
Of course,
These days,
There's a lot of choice out there.
Thirty-five people who wanted to meditate,
They were very limited.
Whatever was near them,
They went and that's what they learned.
Today,
We have a whole worldwide web of meditation,
Buddhism,
And all kinds of different traditions.
And so taking charge of our practice is important because it can be very confusing.
Well,
Who do I follow?
Where do I go?
What kind of meditation do I do?
All of these kind of things.
And even if you decide,
Okay,
Well,
I'm a this Buddhist,
I'm a that Buddhist,
Well,
Then within that type of Buddhism,
Then there's like 30 different teachers that teach 30 different things.
How do I know what to do?
How do I know what to follow?
So this is why it's important.
You take charge and you take responsibility for your practice to really examine this,
To find your own path.
And sometimes that will take some trying out different ways,
Trying out different paths,
Different types of meditation.
And that's fine.
That's part of the practice,
Investigating these things for yourself and personalizing your practice in this regard.
And when confusion comes up,
You do work through that by practicing.
And how that is you don't lie to yourself.
Really,
It's very important to you'll find yourself that you will try to convince yourself and to lie yourself of all kinds of things.
Sometimes at night,
I'm meditating back and forth.
And in my mind is like,
You don't need to meditate tonight.
You worked hard today.
Just go to your room.
Don't meditate.
So this is where your mind is following these habitual tendencies and telling you these kind of things.
And you have to be able to say,
You know what?
No,
I'm not going to follow that.
I don't have to follow that.
I'm going to keep practicing.
So when you don't lie to yourself,
When you really see that and you're truthful to yourself,
You trust yourself,
Then you can find your path because you understand yourself better.
And so you know what is working better for you and you find your path easier.
Instead of becoming like a spiritual materialist where you try a million different things and you've been meditating for 40 years and then you don't see that you got anything out of it.
That's the danger.
That's the danger of,
You know,
Taking this path on,
The practice on for yourself.
But you have to,
You know,
There's pros and cons to this.
It's just something to be aware of that it's important to try different methods and different things,
But also not to get too lost and become excited.
Oh,
I'm going to try,
You know,
What's the meditation du jour this week?
I'm going to try this or I'm going to try that.
You know,
What's the newest meditation technique on insight time or headspace or whatever?
You have to be careful of that.
It's okay to explore and to investigate,
But not to get too lost into that.
And so I'm going a lot longer than I thought I was going to.
Incorporating the practice into daily life.
First thing is consistency is more important than length,
Especially for those of you who are just starting out.
It's much better to start out doing five minutes a day than it is trying to do an hour or a half hour every five or six days.
If you sit down and you develop that consistent practice,
Even if it's five minutes,
Even if it's 10 minutes in the beginning,
Don't worry about the time because what happens is when you develop,
We're working with our habits,
We're developing this habit of wanting to sit down or do our walking meditation or whatever our practice is,
We're developing this habit.
And the more we do this practice,
The more benefit we see from it,
The more we understand how good it is for our life.
And then you know what happens?
You naturally just want to do it more and longer.
And from that point on,
You've already developed that consistency.
You've already developed the desire to do it every day.
And from that desire to do it every day,
You start adding more time and it becomes more of a priority.
And before you think,
Oh,
I'm so busy,
I'm so tired,
I got to do this and this and that and this and this,
And then you realize,
Oh,
Well,
This is not as important.
This thing that I did at this time is not as important to me as it used to be.
Now I have more time to do my meditation.
That's what happens.
It has to become a habit.
It has to become a priority in your life.
And until it becomes a priority,
You're going to go through these,
You know,
I meditated good for a couple of weeks and now I haven't meditated for like seven months and I'm going to get back into meditation again and I'm going to go up and down and all these things.
It becomes a habit.
That's when,
And when it becomes a priority,
That's when it starts to become part of your livelihood.
It starts to become part of who you are and what you're doing living this life.
So it's important to do that,
To make that a priority.
And so this practice can be done,
As I said,
From the beginning at all times,
Off the cushion on the cushion.
When we're at home,
Right,
When we're at home,
What do we want to do?
We want to be able to set aside a spot,
A place for us that we can go,
That we can have that peace and the ability to sit and to practice for however long we're practicing,
Right?
And we have family,
We have children,
Whoever we're living with,
We have to say,
You know,
This time is for me.
I need to do this.
I'm going to be doing this.
And you do your practice.
The best thing,
Of course,
Is to get your family involved in the meditation.
Young children usually like to,
They think it's interesting and exciting,
At least until they get old enough where they'd rather play Xbox.
But,
You know,
You can,
When a child or people you live with,
They see that you're doing this,
Then they might start to see that you've changed,
That you're more content,
More peaceful,
More happy,
Less agitated.
Well,
Then you're showing them the way.
You're being a guide for them.
They're seeing what this practice does.
And then they become interested.
So what about,
I spoke a little bit about family,
Getting family members interested and kids.
What about work?
Have you thought,
Have you ever tried meditating at work at all?
Meditating at work is important because,
You know,
Why?
We spend at least a third of our day at work,
Some of us much more than a third of our day.
So it's important to continue our practice.
When we're at work,
We can do a couple of different things.
One of the best things to do is practice metta when we're at work.
Practice,
If we work with people,
We work at an office,
As we're walking by,
Just like when we walk on the road and we wave to people and we practice metta,
As you're walking past people,
Practice giving your goodwill to all the people that you work with.
Practice in your seat.
I learned from Bonteji here years ago a wonderful technique where for every hour,
The last minute of that hour,
Stop and whatever you're doing in that minute,
You stop what you're doing and for just a minute,
You follow your breath.
And I put that into practice in a very busy and hectic lifestyle,
A very busy and hectic work.
I did it,
So I know it works and this is why I suggest it to you.
You can,
No matter what you're doing,
You can do this practice.
It's very important to be able to understand that.
And when you do that,
You're doing it off the cushion,
On the cushion you're practicing,
Well then,
All of a sudden,
It's part of your life.
It becomes part of what you do and how you live.
And you're examining your life and you're examining your experience and your mind and your body throughout,
No matter what you're doing,
No matter if you're work,
Home,
Whatever you're doing,
You can do this,
You can do this practice.
And so another important thing is if you have a group near you of meditators,
It's good to have people that you can meditate with,
That you can talk to about this practice.
You know,
If you don't,
It's okay too.
You can practice.
It's important to,
If there's a group that's even an hour away from you,
Two hours away from you,
A place like this,
Every once in a while to come to a place like this,
Because when you practice out in the world,
It's very easy for the practice to become lax,
For you to kind of lose sight of why you're practicing.
You come to a place like this,
You come to,
You spend time with other meditators and that refuels you so that you can continue your practice.
You go back out into the world and you can continue your practice in the world.
There's also a lot of resources online.
So many things that you can learn online.
You can learn about meditation,
Guided meditation.
If you're interested in Buddhism,
You can learn about all the various aspects of Buddhism online.
There's monks that do Dhamma talks and all kinds of stuff online.
So there's a lot of resources for you to make this practice your livelihood and incorporate it in your daily life.
The simile I like to use is called the simile of the ember.
In ancient times,
Our ancestors,
Before it became easy to just click a button and light a match or something like that,
At the end of a fire,
They would take a coal and they would put it in a container and while they were traveling around,
That coal would stay hot.
And when they reached their next destination,
They put the coal in instantly and they started the fire right back up again.
So this is what we do in our practice.
When we come and we sit down,
We start that fire.
Normally what we do is we get up and we walk out and then the fire goes out.
But when we practice,
Incorporating our practice into everything that we're doing,
Then we continue that flame.
We keep it going.
And so when we come back to sit down again,
The fire comes back up.
Our mind,
Because we have been continuing to practice,
Our mind when we sit down again becomes clear,
Quiet,
And we're able to concentrate and follow our breath much easier because we have continued that practice.
It's not just something that we do for a half hour a day on the cushion.
And so I wanted to talk about,
To give you,
Those of you who are interested in learning more about specific Buddhist meditation,
There's two suttas that are very important.
These are the direct instructions of the Buddha on how to meditate.
The first is the four foundations of mindfulness,
Satipatthana Sutta.
If you just Google that and YouTube it,
You'll find many teachers,
Monastics,
Lay teachers talking about how you follow this practice.
And Bhante Panjaratan in his guided meditation actually guided you through that,
Observing your body,
Your feeling,
Your mind,
Observing your experiences through these frameworks and seeing how that comes together in your experience.
And you can do that no matter what you're doing.
If you're moving wood,
Raking the leaves,
Cooking,
What is your body doing right now,
What feelings are in your body,
What is your mind doing,
Always observing that,
Always observing all of these things as you're going about doing your practice.
So that's important to keep that teaching in mind and to study that.
It's not something that you just read and you learn and you know how to do it and it's easy.
It's something that is to practice and to understand and to incorporate in our lives.
And the other is mindfulness of breathing.
I led you through a little bit of that today.
There's 16 steps to that.
It teaches you how to observe and investigate your breath as you're following,
As you're taking the breath as your object.
And I'll make sure these are posted on the board for you guys as well.
So in the end,
I like to say that you always have a choice.
Sometimes it's very hard to see that we always have a choice,
But what this practice does,
One of the very benefits of this practice,
Is that it allows us to understand this.
When we're able to practice and we're able to see how our mind works,
We're able to see what arises in our mind because we've practiced this,
We've made that a habit.
We understand,
We're beginning to understand how our mind works.
And then a thought or an intention comes in our mind.
And before we didn't have a choice,
Now we do.
We understand we have a choice.
I can follow this thought and intention or I don't have to follow this thought and intention.
I can choose to do this because it's skillful or I can choose not to do this because it's skillful.
It's unskillful.
So it's important to realize that you have this choice because your choice is actually your kama.
Kama or karma is simply action.
It's what you do.
And your karma is your choice.
Our actions are what we do,
Have consequences to us and to others for the future.
And coming here,
Doing meditation practice,
That is kama.
That's very skillful kama that you do because you want to go against the stream.
You don't want to allow unskillful habits to control your life.
You want to change your life.
And when you take this practice on as part of your livelihood,
That's what you do.
And you see the benefits of that over time as you practice,
As you keep doing this.
It doesn't happen overnight.
You don't start it and then a month later you're trying to find out,
Oh,
What's different?
What's new?
Are there benefits to this?
But over time,
When you look back,
You realize,
Well,
A couple years ago in this situation I would have acted this way,
But now it didn't bother me as much.
Or now I didn't,
It didn't,
I knew I had the choice not to act in this way or not to react,
But to act in a mindful and skillful way.
So it's important to understand this,
Important to have the courage to continue with this practice and to make it your livelihood so that you can see the benefits of that.
So I wish you for the remainder of this retreat and also into your future,
No matter what type of practice you do,
Practicing meditation,
Practicing trying to develop a better you,
Trying to abandon unskillful habits and to create a person who has a clear,
Bright mind,
Free of all the defilements in greed,
Hatred and delusion.
So I wish you all very much success in this practice and that this practice becomes and brings much benefit to your life.
Sadhu,
Sadhu,
Sadhu.
