Welcome.
My name is Elliot Dasher.
I'm a physician and meditation teacher.
I'm happy to be sharing this time with you today.
I would like to begin by sharing a few words about meditation and spiritual development.
There are three aspects of inner development,
Study,
Reflection,
And practice.
Study is accomplished by reading or listening to teachings.
This is followed by personal reflection on what has been studied.
Finally,
We engage in practice to realize directly what we have been exploring through study and reflection.
Today our topic is enduring happiness.
What follows is teaching meditation.
The aim is to gain insight and understanding through these three components,
Study,
Reflection,
And practice.
So you may now prepare yourself for meditation.
Relax your mind and body in a comfortable position.
Keep your eyes open or closed as you wish and listen to the teachings on enduring happiness with a meditative mind.
Consider the following question.
Is it possible to be consistently happy and peaceful for no reason or cause whatsoever even during the most challenging of circumstances?
If so,
Wouldn't you want this for your life?
For millennia,
Wise individuals across diverse cultures and time have explored this question.
They have carefully,
Through contemplative practice and reflection,
Examined their own experience.
Remarkably,
Each arrived at the same conclusion.
Sustained and stable happiness is innate to human life.
It is not acquired through some effort or the fortunate alignment of particular circumstance.
It is given as an innate part of who we are.
But then you might ask,
Where is it?
Why does it seem so elusive?
The problem these wise teachers discovered lies not in its absence from our essential self,
But rather in our human tendency to look for happiness in the wrong places.
Mistaking ordinary and transient pleasures for resilient and enduring happiness.
Once again,
We've learned to look inside what can only be found within.
Pleasure or transient happiness is the experience of satisfaction and delight that we attribute to outer experience.
Although it may seem otherwise at the time,
These on and off pleasures of daily life are always ephemeral.
They come and go.
Because they are ephemeral,
We are always chasing pleasure and seeking more.
We find certain people,
Objects,
Experiences to be satisfying and others unsatisfying.
We orient ourselves towards what is satisfying and avoid what is unsatisfying.
Pleasure is seen as residing in other people and experiences.
Pleasure always depends on an outer reason,
Cause or circumstance,
Person,
Object or experience.
When these change,
The pleasure dissipates with it.
Authentic happiness is quite different.
It's the experience of peace,
Delight and joy that naturally arises from a healthy and wise heart and mind.
It sources internal rather than external.
It is natural and effortless and unlike pleasure,
It is stable and enduring.
This inner happiness is not dependent on anything external.
It is resilient,
Steadfast and remains a stable touchstone of serenity and happiness throughout life's challenges and adversities.
Much as the depths of the ocean are undisturbed by the movements of surface waves,
So an authentic happiness and serenity is untouched by day-to-day annoyances and difficulties.
We remain calm and happy within while dealing effectively without a complexity.
An enduring happiness requires that we turn inward and discover the ever-present natural ease and contentment of a still and peaceful mind.
It's like moving with the clouds so that we can see the Sun.
It is always there.
The happiness and serenity that resides within has no cause or reason.
It's naturally present at the center of our being.
Again,
We call this happiness without a cause or reason.
As a physician,
I can assure you that the distinction between the life-spend chasing pleasure with his ups and downs and a life mocked by sustained inner calm and happiness is reflected in both our physiology and health.
There is a seamless connection between mind and body.
You can assess this feeling by yourself when you're in the cycle of searching for pleasure and again feel the body feeling when it's rested in its serene inner nature.
The dream of resilient peace and happiness is a timeless human quest.
It began centuries ago with the inquiries of ancient philosophers,
Scholars,
And continues into present time through the efforts of modern-day neuroscience and contemplatives.
Yet you and I right now come to take the adventure of a lifetime that realizes the possibility of this happiness and peace that surpasses any reason or understanding.
So let's now begin by shifting our teaching meditation into a practice meditation.
We can begin by bringing awareness to the in and out of the breath,
The breath of the natural breathing cycle.
The awareness we will use in this process of observing the breath is the same kind of awareness that will take us through the latter progressive stages of practice.
So there are two kinds of awareness,
Ego-based ordinary awareness and pure unconditioned awareness that is free of interpretations,
Preferences,
And judgments formed from past experience.
This natural awareness is neutral.
It's an observing awareness that experiences each moment as it is without commentary.
In this case,
The breath,
Letting the breath come and go on its own.
This open pure awareness like space that knows and allows clouds and mist and rainbows to rise and fall in its presence without clinging to these movements or a mirror that observes images come and go without attaching them or the ocean that allows waves to rise and fall on their own.
So gently bring your attention to your breath,
Observing its movements without commentary.
Thoughts,
Feelings,
Mental images,
Sensations will intermittently arise and distract you from observing your breath.
When this occurs,
Either bring yourself back to a gentle awareness of the breath or take a moment to notice and acknowledge the mental activity without reacting or giving it attention.
Left alone,
Mental activity will dissolve by itself and you can easily and effortlessly return to the observing breath.
Practice observing the breath simply and naturally for a few minutes.
Relax mind and body completely.
Allow the awareness to be easeful,
Natural and relaxed.
Allow mental activity to come and go without clinging or attachment.
A small trick you may try is to suspend breathing for a few moments after an inspiration.
You'll notice that the mind actually quiets when you suspend breathing.
Rest in the stillness,
Take its perfume into the next breathing cycle and repeat as frequently as it is helpful.
As your mind begins to calm down,
You can slowly let go of your focus on the breath,
Open your awareness to whatever sensory or mental activity arises naturally.
The point here is to rest in this open,
Spacious,
Natural and still awareness and even though mental activity and sensations will arise,
If left alone they will come and go on their own and no distraction will occur.
Rest in this open spacious calm awareness for a few moments.
This is the place of openness and heart from which your natural happiness spontaneously arises without reason.
Rest with ease in this open awareness.
Nothing to do,
No place to go.
Rest mind and body.
If your mind becomes too active you can go back to the breathing.
Practice the focused awareness with the breath for a few moments and when things quiet down,
Open up again to everything.
Remain situated,
Quiet still awareness in the observer,
In the witness.
Remember that all mental activity dissolves on its own and left alone.
Remain in just a simple awareness,
Simple presence,
Simple beingness.
This is the heart essence of who you are.
As you rest in the simple stillness of open awareness,
Notice that its qualities include calmness,
Serenity,
Contentment.
All thoughts,
Feelings and mental images come and go leaving no trace,
Thus they have no influence on you.
You're not pulled back into any of the causes of mental afflictions.
Past experience isn't there,
Future projections aren't there and even your sense of,
Ordinary sense of,
Awe isn't there.
There is just a simple presence and being,
Openness,
Spaciousness and in that there is simply a natural quality of contentment and happiness.
For another minute,
Marinate in the sense of stillness,
Calm and contentment.
For some,
This spaciousness and ease,
Irrespective of what rises and falls in the mind,
Is permeated with contentment,
Joy and even a sense of bliss.
These experiences are always part of a natural being but can be experienced only as we stabilize our natural self and begin to live fully in who we are in the present moment,
Than rather than who we believe we are.
The important insight is that these experiences simply,
Naturally and spontaneously arise when we're in the center of our being.
No outside cause,
No discernible reason and nothing,
Nothing about this experience of happiness and contentment is dependent on anything else.
Therefore,
It's happiness without a reason,
It just is,
It's enduring,
It's stable.
All that requires of you to rest in your natural and authentic sense of being.
When you come back to daily experience this may linger,
In time our usual conditioning will take over and pull our mind and heart towards the usual objects and experiences of awareness that we're always chasing.
But you can stop at any time,
Take a few deep breaths,
Let go of all that is essential to you and rest in the spaciousness of the moment and here once again you will find the happiness that naturally exists without reason.
Bring it into the following moments of your life and return to it as frequently as you can.
You can repeat this practice and the teaching that preceded it at any time.
