Day 002/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

This track includes several tools to help strengthen your meditation practice.
* 15 minutes Dharma talk/meditation advice and inspiration.
* About 20 minutes of guided meditation.
* About 25 minutes of silent meditation practice.
* A Q&A session/closing thoughts after the meditation practice.

Transcript

Hello,

Welcome to this afternoon's meditation class,

To the experts,

Well not really experts,

But the beginners class,

The introduction to meditation series of four lessons starting today.

That class is in the room to my right.

This is the ongoing meditation class for those who have meditated before and who could sit at least 45 minutes and I think that,

Because it's a longer time to sit meditation,

So if you haven't meditated before,

You'll find this a little bit difficult,

So for those people coming for the first time to these meditation classes here in Buddhist society in Nollamaal,

Please,

It's in the room to my right.

This is the ongoing class.

And in the ongoing class every week we mention a different aspect of meditation.

We don't give the overview,

But we focus on some of the problems and difficulties people face in meditation,

The techniques to overcome them so that little by little you can learn how to be more and more peaceful and more successful in your meditation.

And first of all please know that meditation is a very peaceful activity and it shouldn't really take much effort.

When people do have effort they usually get headaches and other problems,

So here we're learning how to just relax our body and relax our mind.

Basically learning how just to watch without interfering,

To be aware without doing anything.

That is just a basic overview of meditation.

But of course the biggest problem which keeps coming up time and time and time again in meditation is people think too much.

Last night in the guided meditation I gave before the Friday night talk,

I did mention one method to overcome that thinking mind which is actually to put space between you and your thoughts.

And that metaphor,

That way of looking at your mind and the one watching your mind is very helpful and people have found it one of the most effective ways of learning how to let go of all this thinking so you can be quiet and peaceful and allow the meditation to go very deep.

And that method again really works because you will find that the thoughts inside of your mind go on and on and on and on,

Taking you away from peacefulness when you get involved in those thoughts.

The word involved,

You get really caught up in them.

In this metaphor,

When I'm sitting here and there's a movie happening in front of me on the TV screen or in a movie theatre,

When there's a space between us,

Then there's no involvement at all.

You can actually learn how to let go.

But when you're really caught up in the movie,

It's amazing what people could do.

I told that nice little anecdote in the Open the Door of Your Heart book of,

I mention this because we have a visitor from Jamaica at our monastery and one of my friends went to Jamaica about 30,

40 years ago and he went to a very rough town in Jamaica.

Jamaica had the biggest murder rate in the world and he went to a drive-in movie theatre and he couldn't believe in a drive-in movie theatre in upcountry Jamaica,

The screen was made out of solid concrete.

It may be a foot thick.

You wonder why don't you use like a canvas screen like everybody else?

And they said the reason was because in that particular town,

They loved violent movies,

Cowboys and Indians,

Gangsters and police and whenever there was a gunfight,

The people in the audience would get out their guns and join in and they would shoot the marshal,

If they didn't like the marshal,

They'd shoot the gangster if they didn't like him.

On the screen they got that involved in what was going on.

Now that is exactly what people do when you get caught up in the thoughts.

You give them a reality which they don't deserve,

You feel like you're right in the centre of them and you keep them going on and on and on.

And all we really need to do is put some space,

Metaphorical space or even imagine physical space between you and your thoughts.

Project your thinking out in front of you somewhere and imagine yourself as some observer who's watching these thoughts from a distance.

It gives you some sense of objectivity rather than being caught up in them.

And when you stand back and look at the thoughts as if on a screen,

You are not the thoughts,

You are separated from them,

The thoughts are over there,

You are over here.

By doing that you will find,

Number one,

When you see the thoughts objectively,

You find what a waste of time they are and also it gives you the ability to turn them off,

Pretty much at will.

What am I doing this for?

I'm not caught up in them,

They're not really interesting,

I can see them from a distance and then you find that the thoughts can actually disappear and you can have some silence.

Please never have the idea that the thoughts will actually answer any of your problems.

You've done that so many times before,

Trying to find the answers to problems or difficulties especially philosophies in life and the thoughts just give you more questions and more arguments which is why traditionally in all of the wise religions it is from silence you gain wisdom,

Not from thinking.

And if we can learn how to be a little bit more silent,

We're also far closer to the truth of life.

And as Lao Tzu used to say,

If ever when you're seeing a sunset you think what a beautiful sunset,

If you think about it rather than seeing it,

Then you are just watching the words,

You're not watching the sunset.

Or like a cartoon,

One of my favourite cartoons from Lunick was when he had his family watching a TV in a room and the TV,

On the TV was a sunset on some nature channel and then the other half of the cartoon was an open window with a real sunset happening.

But they weren't watching the real sunset,

They were watching the image on a TV screen.

And that is very similar,

You're not watching the real life,

You're watching the real life,

Its image as recorded on the TV of your thoughts.

So when we realise that when we look at a sunset,

If we give it a name,

We are just watching the names,

We miss the beauty of the sunset.

When I was young I was so interested in astronomy,

I started to learn the names of the stars and the constellations and get as much information as I could about them.

And then that meant that when I looked at the stars at the night I could never see the stars,

All I could see is their names and what they meant or what I told they meant.

And it took me so many years to learn how to forget all of those names so I could see the stars at night just as everybody else could,

Just to see their beauty,

Not their names.

It's the same that sometimes people come for a walk in our forest where our monasteries are.

And they give all of the names of the different species of trees.

The only tree I know and I've been here living in Serpentine about 31 years now,

I just know them as gum trees.

I don't know what particular species they are and that's on purpose.

Because if I knew what species they were and what subspecies and what class of which subspecies,

Then I would just think too much and I would never be able to appreciate the beauty of the forest.

So,

Okay,

Somebody watch it.

So this is the introduction to meditation classes on the road to my right.

So this is where we learn how to take away the value of thinking,

Put some space between us and the thoughts,

Not to get involved in the thoughts.

And then you find those thoughts that won't last very long and you'll have some silence.

When you do have the silence,

You'll actually be seeing things in their raw rather than what you think they are.

You won't be giving them names,

You'll see them for what they are.

Now this is so important to get peace in meditation and also wisdom in meditation.

So when you are meditating,

You know what happens for so many people,

They start thinking and it's only when the thoughts are over,

They say oh my goodness,

I've been thinking all the time,

I've wasted so many minutes or maybe the whole meditation.

When you learn how to put space between you and your thoughts,

It means you are much more aware of what you are doing.

You don't get lost inside the thoughts,

You are apart from them.

The other simile which I like to give is a simile of being in a jungle,

You don't know which way to go,

You are lost in the middle of things.

And if you find a tall tower,

A hill or climb on top of a tree,

Then from above the forest you can find your directions.

You are not caught up inside the forest,

You are above it with a bird's eye view.

That's like being caught up in the forest of thinking,

You don't know which way to go.

But if you can imagine the thinking,

Your thoughts as a forest and you stand away from it,

You stand apart from it,

And then you actually can see the thinking from a distance,

Then you get your idea of what all the thinking is.

You get the bird's eye view of a forest,

You know which way you can go.

You don't get lost.

So those are some ideas about how to deal with the thinking mind so that when you are meditating that's one big problem that you can overcome.

And it's also if you can overcome it in meditation you can let go of the thinking,

Allow it to just stop by itself when you give it space between you,

The observer and the thoughts.

You'll also find if you have any problems or difficulties in life,

Any disappointments in life,

You don't go thinking,

Thinking,

Thinking,

Thinking and giving yourself a headache and losing sleep at night.

Too many people do not know how to sleep efficiently.

And if you can only just learn,

Even when we go to bed at night,

Put in some space between us and our thoughts.

I'm over here,

My thoughts are out there.

Then you may be able to let go of those thoughts and have a really good night's sleep and not worry about anything.

You deserve it.

Okay,

So that's just a little bit of instructions on how to overcome thinking.

Now we're going to start our meditation so if you want to get yourselves comfortable,

Whatever you wish to do to move this,

To move that,

To get the body nice and comfortable.

Before we start,

I'm going to,

As usual,

Give the introduction,

Sorry,

Give the guided meditation,

The first five or ten minutes and then to let you go and to follow the meditation as you wish.

Oh yeah,

Thank you.

Can you please turn off your mobile phones?

That was very timely.

So close your eyes.

In some traditions they keep the eyes open but that just makes too many distractions.

Okay.

And with your eyes closed,

Keep your awareness on your bodily feelings.

Eights and pains,

Heat,

Cold,

Pressure.

And first of all,

See if you can alleviate those physical feelings by moving your body first of all.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Is there anything inside your body which is still aching?

Give it kindness.

Mindfulness will give you feedback to show the feeling becomes softer.

You can relax headaches,

Pains,

Tensions inside the body just by mindfulness plus kindness.

Be relaxed things,

Part by part.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

When the body is nicely relaxed,

Let it go and focus on relaxing your mind,

The mental world.

If there are some thoughts going on in your mind,

Imagine pushing them out of your head onto a screen.

And were you the one who was watching,

It's a distance from the screen.

That objectivity means you got perspective on what you're doing.

It makes it possible to let go of the thoughts if you want.

When you're lost in thoughts,

You literally are right in the middle of them,

Like lost in the forest.

When you push them out and you're separated from them.

The one who's watching and the thoughts distant from each other,

It's like having the birds over you.

You're not in the thoughts anymore,

You can fly above and beyond them into silence.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Getting very close to the end of the meditation now.

Just be mindful of how you feel,

How much you've relaxed,

How much peace of mind there is.

And in this meditation,

What worked and what didn't?

I will now ring the gong three times.

Please wait until the last sound from the gong vanishes.

And as it does,

Open your eyes to end the meditation at the vanishing of the third ringing of the gong.

Gong.

Very good.

So,

Many of you know that these Saturday afternoon meditations are streamed live.

So those of you who can't come to the Saturday afternoon or you're overseas,

The people listen in from all different countries and have the opportunity of asking questions.

Today we have two from Thailand and one from the United States.

The first one,

How do I deal with intense anxiety during meditation?

The feeling that comes with no cause and I feel it deeply.

So standard,

Any sort of feeling like that which comes in meditation,

At least in meditation you have the opportunity to develop some awareness.

So first of all,

Anxiety will get worse if you try and get rid of it.

So instead we just investigate what does anxiety feel like?

And see if you can know anxiety well enough that you can write sort of,

You know,

An A4 paper,

Sort of,

You know,

Maybe two or three pages of what it feels like.

In other words,

Really be aware of it.

Sometimes people say I feel anxious but people say what does it feel like?

You know,

Describe it to me.

Well,

It's just anxious,

That's all.

It shows you're not really aware of those emotions.

So number one,

Really get to know it.

Understand how it feels as fully as you possibly can.

And then when you feel it,

Not deeply as they say in this question,

But you feel it fully,

Widely,

Broadly,

You understand it and just the different sensations and feelings both in the mental world and the physical world.

Then it's pretty simple to overcome.

Once you know it,

As it says in the Chinese art of war,

Know your enemy,

Know yourself,

A thousand battles fought,

A thousand battles won,

It's actually knowing what this thing is first of all.

And then you can actually just experiment with just simple things like kindness.

And as long as your awareness is strong enough,

As I mentioned earlier,

You'll notice that feeling of anxiety change.

It's not the same feeling constantly from moment to moment,

It changes.

And if you're aware of the change,

You'll notice that when you are accepting,

Kind,

Warm,

Embracing of those emotions,

You'll find its intensity decreases.

You can notice that because you're aware of what's going on,

You're not trying to get rid of it,

You're just getting to know it.

And you'll find as it gets less and less,

You'll associate the attitude which lessens things like anxiety,

Acceptance,

Kindness,

Basic compassion.

Once you get that and you make that connection,

The rest is very very easy.

You get so compassionate,

You can just relax the anxiety totally away.

As you also relax aches and pains in the body totally away.

You get to know them first of all,

Basic mindfulness,

Awareness of these problems.

I mean really get to know them,

That's the standard which I set for people.

Can you just write down,

You know,

Maybe a thousand words on what the anxiety feels like?

Get to know it that well.

And when you get to know it that well,

Add this beautiful kindness to it and you'll find it vanishes.

Second question,

I would like to practice reclining meditation as I'm getting old,

Which is lying down meditation.

I'm also getting older,

I know the person who has written this,

You're not that old.

But you know people do feel old.

But even if you lay down and do some meditation,

How many times when you go to bed at night,

You toss and turn,

You can't find a comfortable position.

And it's true that for me,

I'm over 60,

Actually I'm not 62 and a half,

I had my 750th birthday about a month ago.

Absolutely true,

I won't lie to you,

I can't lie because I'm a monk.

And they even gave me a cake,

Happy 750th Ajahn Brahm.

750 months since I was born.

Not years.

I quite like that because as a monk,

The older you are,

The more respect you get.

So when I say I'm 750,

People are like,

Wow,

That's awesome.

But anyway,

Unfortunately,

Even though I'm already at aches and pains now and again,

Still the most comfortable position for me is like sitting down or even walking I have the right attitude to my body.

In other words,

I learn how to relax it.

If you can relax it sitting up,

You can usually relax it laying down.

Really it continues,

Unfortunately I have used the technique of watching my breath or scanning my body with metta when I had insomnia or depression.

It has worked well but now whenever I try meditation laying down,

I will just fall asleep peacefully.

Wonderful.

Sometimes people don't have enough sleep.

They suffer from insomnia.

I've written that in brief at the beginning of this session that a lot of times because we think so much,

We can't just fall into a nice quiet sleep.

And just that much,

Just being able to have a good night's sleep is a wonderful thing for you.

Just letting go of thinking is a way of helping that.

So it's an incredible thing to be able to sleep well at night.

And now you're falling asleep peacefully and now you complain.

Wonderful.

Well done,

You're making a lot of progress.

So what happens next is when you catch up on your sleep because many people have sleep deficit,

They don't sleep enough.

And when you catch up on that,

After a while you wake up and you don't need to sleep.

Some people can't sleep because they don't need sleep.

And what one does,

One just meditates.

Being in the present moment,

Letting go of all your thoughts and just being.

So you can do that but even saying that none other person is not that old,

Even so that there are times in one's life when one will be sick in hospital,

Having to lay down and sometimes you have to lay down for hours in hospital,

All day sometimes you can't walk because of some operation or whatever.

It is a very good to be able to learn how to meditate lying down in a hospital bed.

And the way you do it is exactly the same as you do sitting meditation.

You're not doing a scanning of the body or watching your breath,

You're just letting go of all the past and future,

Relaxing the body first of all,

Letting go of all the past and future,

Letting go of all the thinking and just allowing your mind to be in the present moment,

Embracing it.

The breath will come to you eventually,

You don't have to go searching for it.

So the thing is to do very little and to have a lot of awareness,

A lot of kindness,

Just to make peace,

Be kind,

Be gentle when you're laying down.

That's all you need to do.

You get into the deepest of meditations as you're laying down.

So exactly the same thing,

Relaxing your body and just letting go of the body,

Just relaxing the mind,

Being in this present moment,

Being kind to this moment,

And just getting very deep into peacefulness.

And our last question,

Are there any specific suttas?

You know,

The scriptures of the Buddha,

Where the Buddha talks about living in the present and present moment awareness.

Have they been derived by various other teachings?

The most obvious one is the three suttas,

They're called the baddhekarata suttas in the Middle-Leg Sayings.

So in the United States,

If you look at the Middle-Leg Sayings,

In Pali it's a Majjhima Nikaya,

And it's called baddhekarata,

There's three suttas there.

And I think they usually call one fortune at night,

And you'll find them there,

And there you'll see little poems about letting go of the past,

Letting go of the future,

Living in the present moment.

So it is actually straight from the suttas.

So you can find it there.

It's not from A.

Cart Tolle,

A.

Cart Tolle took it from Buddhism.

Unfortunately,

We never took out patents,

We never got this idea of intellectual property rights.

So we got no attachments,

Buddhists,

Which is our problem.

So people take this and take that,

And we let them,

Which is nice.

That means that sometimes people make a fortune out of these sorts of stuff,

Which you hear here for free.

There was a fellow who came to see me over in Kuala Lumpur some years ago,

Really,

Really rich,

Came from a very rich family.

And because he came from a rich family,

When he had some sort of psychology problems,

He went all the way to United States,

To,

I think,

This,

What was it called,

One of these clinics,

Which in Cleveland,

Ohio,

I think where all these wealthy film stars and sort of rock stars go for rehab.

And had a personal session with Jon Kabat-Zinn,

Who invented,

Who took this mindfulness business.

What was it called?

Anyway,

No,

No,

No,

The actual clinic.

Myo Clinic,

Yeah,

That's the one.

And he was,

So he paid an incredible amount of money for this.

And when he came to hear my talk,

He said,

This is ridiculous.

Now you give your talks for free.

And it's far,

Far,

Far better than I paid all these thousands,

Hundreds of thousands of dollars for,

You know,

To get it from the source.

I said,

Yes,

It's because we don't charge for it.

That's why people don't come.

And there's a lot to be said of that.

So you get it from the source here.

So much better value for money and straight from the heart of these things.

So,

You know,

A lot of things come from the teachings of the Buddha or the teachings from the monks and nuns of our modern age.

And you hear it here first.

So don't go spending money for this sort of stuff.

You know,

Just get it sort of right from the source and it's really powerful stuff.

State of the art,

Cutting edge.

So anyway,

Any questions from the people here?

That's the three questions from overseas.

Yes,

My good man.

Could you explain for me what you consider half a decent mindfulness in meditation?

What I consider is what mindfulness?

Reasonable mindfulness and reasonable concentration.

What are the signs of it that past the point where you have this sort of like racing mind syndrome and it settles down.

Could you say a few words about that and then I've got some questions for what you do at that point.

OK.

Reasonable mindfulness.

Now,

You know that I was one of those who started the idea that mindfulness is not just a thing.

It has different degrees of power.

And that's an important concept to add to mindfulness because even when you wake up in the morning and you're half asleep,

You still have mindfulness but it's low power.

You know,

Until you've had your first cup of coffee,

You're not really awake.

But you know,

You're awake enough,

You can find your way to the toilet,

You know where the light switches are,

You're not sort of unconscious.

Your mindfulness is low.

And you have the ordinary mindfulness of ordinary people in this world.

They're aware enough of the traffic,

They know where the speed cameras are,

They have some awareness.

But again,

The awareness we get through meditation is especially awareness which is focused on interesting parts of our being.

The first thing is,

I always say that the body,

The body awareness is usually where we start to build up some awareness,

To find actually how we feel.

And you know that one of the first times I learned this,

As a Western monk living in north-east of Thailand,

When we weren't on arms around,

We were never,

We weren't allowed to wear shoes or any sandals,

There was always barefoot.

And we were always stepping on things and cutting our feet.

And when my master Ajahn Chah saw all these band-aids which were plastered on all the Western monk's feet,

He couldn't believe it.

He said,

You Westerners have got stupid feet.

There's a very interesting way of calling it,

Calling feet stupid.

Because it was very true,

My hands were very smart,

My head was very smart,

But my feet were totally stupid,

They didn't know what they were doing because my mindfulness wasn't there.

So little by little we learn how to be aware of our body.

So we can actually feel what's going on in it.

It's incredible,

It really is quite worrying for the health professions.

How many people just don't know what's going on in the body?

Which means you get sick,

You don't see the signs.

One book which I read was of heart attack cardiologists who said you don't get a massive heart attack out of the blue.

It just doesn't happen that way.

This is what he said anyway,

I'm not a cardiologist.

But he said you always have minor tremors first of all before the big one comes.

But people are just so unaware they don't notice it.

And that means that when the big one comes,

They think,

Wow,

This shocked me.

It always was there to begin with.

So of course we're not aware of these things.

So we start with awareness of our body,

So we start to feel the body.

We can understand how it is.

And then once you can do that,

You can apply the same thing to your mental world.

And especially as you know that mindfulness-based therapies are always about getting to know your mental world,

Which is another terra incognito for most people.

Suddenly you get angry,

Suddenly you get depressed.

It's not suddenly.

That builds up over lots of negative mind states.

So it gets so bad,

It gets clinical.

So when you start to get aware of what you're thinking,

How you're feeling,

Then that's,

You're beginning to grow mindfulness.

And one of the similes which I gave,

You know,

About getting some perspective,

The thoughts over here,

Emotions over here,

And I'm over there.

Cos when you're right in the middle of it,

You've got no perspective,

You haven't got mindfulness,

Basically.

You're caught up in it.

That's not mindfulness.

And the other simile I gave it last night as well,

Hand so close to my face,

I can't see anything.

Now when I put it out here,

I have mindfulness in my hand.

I can see my hand but I can see other things.

I've got some perspective to it.

That's another idea of mindfulness,

The perspective.

So you're not involved,

You can stand back and get some sort of objective view of your emotional world.

And of course you can see what happens next.

You can understand things.

Now I can see what's going on,

Just like the tower above the jungle.

That simile I gave of going to the Mayan ruins in Tikal in central Grottamala,

Just going above the tree line,

You can actually see where I came from the last day.

You've got the bird's eye view.

You're not caught up in the jungle of your thoughts and emotions.

That's what mindfulness is.

So once you have that degree of mindfulness in your meditation,

In that degree,

Then you can actually start to get some peace.

That becomes the goal.

Now remember,

Please don't mention the word concentration.

They've been on too many of my retreats.

Stillness,

Please,

Not concentration.

To me that's a dirty word.

That spoils so many people's meditation.

So once you have mindfulness,

You can see how I can be more still.

What am I doing which agitates my mind?

When you go for stillness,

You have more and more still.

And the thing with stillness,

It empowers your mindfulness.

It makes it stronger and stronger and stronger.

Until you get really blissed out.

Yes?

My question was,

At that point,

That's really the take off point.

When I'm saying half way decent mindfulness,

I'm saying,

Yeah,

Got it,

Got it,

I'm at that point.

What do I do then when I've got good stillness,

Ok?

And I'm not thinking about my personal problems because things are stable and the mind is not running around all over the place.

Then you get very mindful of that thought,

What do I do now?

Notice that that is what stirs up the mind even more.

So you're aware of just what you're doing inside of your head,

Inside of your mind,

Whatever you wish to call it.

And actually the wisdom part of mindfulness,

Because in traditional Buddhism,

We would never talk about mindfulness apart from wisdom.

We had actually a word,

This is the Thai masters,

They'd always say,

Satipanya.

Sati was mindfulness,

Panya was wisdom.

It would always be mindfulness,

Wisdom,

Mindfulness,

Wisdom,

Mindfulness,

Wisdom.

In things like the suttas,

Sati Sampajanya.

Never sati alone.

Always with wisdom,

So you're aware and you understand what to do with it.

So you're aware of that thought,

What do I do now?

And the wisdom tells you,

Shut up.

Ok,

So that's fine,

Ok,

That's good.

And so my question then is,

At that point,

Then you are,

Ok,

You've either got an object of focus or you've got mindfulness,

Awareness without an object,

Ok,

Then my question is,

Where to from there?

There are a couple of different things,

You know,

There's different masters that talk about stuff and there's the idea of looking at the space between thoughts,

There's the idea of looking at awareness of awareness,

Yeah,

The stuff that's sort of at the more advanced levels of the Satipatthana Sutra where you're looking at the flavours of the mind and mind objects and that sort of stuff.

Can you say something about looking at awareness of awareness and these deeper levels please?

First of all,

You always have an object.

So there's always an object of your awareness,

You can't have awareness without being aware of something.

So sometimes when you are aware and you're not quite sure what it is,

Find out what it is.

That is a simile of like going out from the lit room into the darkness.

At first you can't see what's going on,

Stay there.

Don't move,

Don't go anywhere,

Don't change anything and soon the pupils of the eyes dilate and you start to see things.

That's what happens in your meditation.

If you think you haven't got an object,

It means you can't understand what it is.

Stay there and let the object which you are aware of just evolve,

Manifest itself.

So the point is,

In each one of these,

You're always doing something,

You're trying to direct your meditation.

That means there's no more stillness.

Whenever you do anything,

Whenever you make a choice,

Whenever you say,

What should I do next,

How should I proceed,

That question is what stops the meditation developing.

But I'm talking about something that's stated now,

We are not indulging in cognitions which is what you're talking about.

I'm saying past that point,

It's way past thinking,

It's a feeling type state,

It's like putting a spotlight or something.

Even the act of focusing a spotlight is an act of will.

I'm saying when you have got good concentration at that point,

And you've often times said,

And I know that you're a teacher that teaches absorption meditation techniques as opposed to other teachers in the Burmese tradition,

That sort of stuff.

So there may be a pathway,

I don't know,

But the point about it is,

At that point where it's really,

Really subtle,

Awareness of awareness or whatever you want to call it,

Would you say something about those sorts of that point?

You do absolutely nothing.

You can't have awareness of awareness.

You are aware that you were aware of something in the past.

So you go back in time,

You've lost the present moment,

Number one.

So when you actually,

At that stage,

You're very careful not to do anything.

If you like your mindfulness,

Like the simile of the two guards,

They guard you from actually doing anything.

There's an old,

I like to say this joke because people remember them,

I read in one of the in-flight magazines once,

That very,

Very soon you'll have pilotless planes.

Because pilots who are driving planes make too many errors and just the technology is so good that if it's all done automatically,

You don't really need pilots and the reaction times of the sensors is a fraction of a second,

A pilot takes at least half a second to make a reaction,

Sometimes it's too late.

So they said in the future there will be just one pilot in the cockpit with a dog.

There's only two people up front.

The pilot's job is to feed the dog and the dog's job is to bite the pilot if it touches anything.

Now that is what you do in that type of meditation.

You should have a dog which bites you if you try and do anything.

In other words,

You stop things.

I think you get it.

When you do a simile like that,

Which is a funny story,

You actually get it.

This is automatic,

Don't do anything.

So if you can have a dog there which bites you,

Whenever you try to do something,

What should I do next?

And then you stop messing around.

Okay,

So we've gone over but it's good stuff.

So thank you for listening and now we can pay respects to Buddha,

Dham and Sangha and then we can go and do whatever we need to do.

Reviews

❤️🙏🏻

Thoughts projecting on to a screen is very helpful..like casting from mobile phone on to TV screen. I immediately felt it. Thank you 🙏😘

The whole thing is good, but the Q&A Is life changing.

A excellent session. TQ n sadhu.

So nice and so grateful to have these lessons and practices. Thank you. ☮️💖🙏

One of my favorite modern day teachers !!! Thanks for this especially now during the time of Covid since I cannot visit my own local monastery. This makes me feel right at home. Namaste