Very good.
So welcome to this Saturday afternoon enlightenment or bust class.
This means most people bust.
So we don't go into meditation with too many goals and trying so hard,
That gives us more stress in life.
We try and make a nice quiet easy time in this Saturday afternoon meditation.
Even though there's some very important things we're saying here.
So if any of you are here for the introduction to meditation class being held in the room to my right,
Please go over there pretty quickly,
Because this is the ongoing class for those who are just that far away from enlightenment or maybe a bit more.
So anyway,
What I was just saying earlier was a very important part of meditation,
Is that sometimes people put far too much effort in meditation.
If you look at what the effort really is,
Where it's coming from,
It's always coming from a sense of self and ego,
Wanted to try and look at this meditation just like going to school or university or some TAFE where you do a course and then you get a qualification and once you get a qualification that somehow gives you power.
Yeah,
Maybe in the world that works but not in meditation.
We can give you all sorts of certificates,
Most of which aren't worth anything,
But that's not really important because we're not doing this as a form of what one person called spiritual materialism.
Spiritual materialism is just like the materialism with things.
We want to attain things,
Gain things,
Own things and thereby measure ourselves by all of the possessions which we have accumulated.
That's materialism.
And sometimes people do that with meditation too,
To see what level of meditation they're at,
How many experiences they have accumulated,
How many retreats they have done.
That has got nothing to do with real meditation.
Real meditation is learning how to be peaceful,
How to be still.
And you can understand every time you try and strive for something,
Every time you decide I'm going to go and get this,
You have stress.
It's what the Buddha said,
The separation between where you are and where you want to be.
And that's a common war in human beings.
You're here,
You want to get somewhere else,
That's called stress.
Imagine,
Imagine that where you are is where you want to be.
How would that feel?
No stress at all,
Nothing to achieve,
Nothing to reach for,
Nothing to get rid of.
Where you are is where you want to be.
That is the essence of meditation,
Coming to that place of contentment,
Which is one of the reasons why when people start to strive,
They're actually going in the opposite direction of what meditation is.
Any effort,
Any striving is actually just to stop things,
Not to do things.
On a recent retreat,
I told a story.
It's a joke from a magazine which I read when I was travelling somewhere and it's pertinent to what I'm saying.
It was,
Somebody was describing the aircraft of the future.
And in the aircraft of the future,
Because all run mostly by some computers,
By programs,
There will be in the cockpit just two beings.
One will be the pilot and the other will be the dog in the cockpit of future aircraft.
And the job of the pilot,
The only job of the pilot will be to feed the dog.
And the job of the dog is to bite the pilot if he touches anything.
That was going to be the aircraft of the future.
Now that was funny but then I thought,
Wow,
That is what meditation is about.
Your effort is the dog in the cockpit to bite you if you do anything.
They stop it,
Leave it alone,
Let it be,
Just be still,
Stop all of this wanting this and trying to get rid of that.
Just be kind without any judgement.
And that's actually the job of our effort is the dog in the cockpit to bite you if you touch something.
In other words,
We just leave it alone.
So we just let this moment be.
And are content to be in this moment,
To let it be.
Sometimes people ask,
What's the difference between letting go and letting be?
It's what you let go of is that controlling,
That will,
That wanting to do something.
The wanting to get rid of things,
The judging,
That's what we let go of.
And when we let go of that controller,
That doer as I call it,
Then all that's left is what is here right now and that's called letting it be.
Letting this moment be.
Now it's a difficult thing to do for many people because they are so active.
But with a little bit of training,
We can just sit here and just let things be.
And then what happens is something amazing.
If you really do let things be,
Then everything starts to become still.
It's the old simile,
When I have a glass of water,
It's a great excuse to give myself a glass of water.
When I have a glass of water and I hold it up,
I often show this to people,
You've probably seen this many times,
I can't hold a glass of water still.
It always is moving.
If I want this to be still,
I have to let it go,
Put it down,
Leave it alone.
And it becomes still all by itself.
That process when you put something down,
You let it go,
It becomes still all by itself.
It's a process of meditation.
It's not something you do,
It's something which happens when you're not doing things.
It's the same as the process of a tree growing in the garden.
You plant the tree,
You protect it from animals,
From drought,
From too much heat,
From frost and you can protect that tree and the tree does the growing.
You don't have to do the growing for it.
The growth is actually in that tree.
It may be just a tiny seed like the old acorns and great oak trees grow from them.
Tiny thing,
How can something so huge grow out of this tiny little thing?
How can something so amazing grow out of this moment?
Same.
Leave it alone,
Stop interfering with it and you'll find the meditation grows like a great tree.
It becomes more and more peaceful,
More and more still.
You become more and more happy as well.
One of those parts of meditation which I want you to understand,
Just have a little bit of confidence in,
Check out,
Find out it works and it will give you great understanding about the process we call meditation.
That when you do things,
When you disturb things,
You take away,
You use up your mental energy and you get tired,
Even depressed.
You keep things still,
You don't do anything,
Let it be.
At first you may feel a bit dull,
At first you may be a bit restless,
At first you may think that this is just ordinary.
But because of stillness being the cause,
Doing nothing,
Just being here,
Not trying to get anywhere,
Not trying to go some place,
Just being here,
You'll find that that stillness creates energy.
And that energy becomes your mindfulness power.
You really become awake.
It's a difficult thing just getting this process going,
Just like lighting a fire,
Just like just getting things going like a train getting out from the railway station.
Hard to get going but once it's going it just keeps on rolling by itself.
And this is just that first part of mindfulness,
That first part of stillness.
Because once it starts to get going,
You are really mindful.
Then all this problem about thoughts and getting caught up in the thoughts,
One of the reasons why people can't stop thinking is they're not aware enough to really know what's going on.
They can't see the problem.
They're too dull.
It's just like trying to find your way in the darkness of the night,
You can't really have any landmarks,
You don't really know what's going on.
The light isn't strong enough.
Mindfulness isn't strong enough sometimes at the beginning of the meditation.
So you know you can't see what's happening,
You get pulled away by these thoughts,
Fantasies,
Memories,
Dreams,
Whatever.
It's one of the reasons why I like to in this session to do some guided meditation at the very beginning,
Just to get the mindfulness strong enough so that when I let you go,
You should have enough mindfulness there to carry on by yourself.
The lights are up in your mind enough to see what's happening.
It's not that hard when you see what's going on,
You see these thoughts,
These stupid thoughts.
What am I getting involved in those for?
They're not going to give me any wisdom,
They're not going to solve any problems,
They're not going to even be happy thoughts,
They're not going to be enjoyable stuff,
They just go all over the place.
So when you actually see them,
If you see how much,
One wastes one's time.
But one's going to get to that point of enough mindfulness,
You see those thoughts are not useful.
And then it's very easy to drop them.
They vanish like many other things.
Stillness causes things to disappear.
You've got less in your mind to be concerned about.
You've got less of a body,
Less of a past,
Less of a future.
Even the present moment becomes simplified.
And there's something about simplicity which is beautiful.
In Chinese art,
They have these very very simple brush strokes,
The water colours.
It's not complicated like a Renoir or something.
Very very simple but very very powerful.
And the simplicity of like the great Chinese water colours is a symbol of a simple mind.
You don't need complexity to have beauty and peace and delight.
In fact it's the other way round.
The more simple,
The more deep,
The more happy.
So when you become still,
The mind becomes very simple.
Only a few things.
And those few things become very prominent,
Pronounced and beautiful.
It's a way of meditation.
But having said all of that,
These aren't goals for you to attain.
This is what happens when you stop reaching out for goals.
Look,
You do that from Monday to Friday and probably a lot of the weekend as well.
Struggling to get places.
Really putting forth a lot of effort trying to get all of your jobs done.
Now is the time for stopping all of that.
No task to be performed.
No goals to be reached.
Nothing to be fulfilled or got rid of.
Nothing to be improved.
Just to be still and allowing meditation to build in its power.
Allow your tree to grow inside.
So that's the instructions from the beginning.
So now,
Having set the scene if you'd like to get into your meditation posture.
However you are comfortable.
Just again once again,
Anyone come to the Introduction to Meditation class,
That's in the room to my right.
I get told off for poaching the clients next door.
Close your eyes.
With your eyes closed,
The awareness comes into your body.
It is true that sight takes up so much of the available bandwidth of the brain.
When that's released by shutting the eyes,
You've got all this awareness,
This capacity available for just feeling your body.
You become very sensitive to it.
There's usually some part of the body which is irritating,
In pain,
Itching or whatever.
A feeling which stands out,
Which is usually an unpleasant feeling.
So don't go away from that unpleasantness,
Go right inside of it as much as you can.
To be aware of the most prominent feeling in your body.
Feel your awareness like you fill a glass to the brim with the awareness of that feeling.
And if you can bring more comfort to that feeling by moving your body,
Please do so.
Adjust your body,
Cough,
Scratch,
Whatever is needed.
And if that feeling does not get less by moving,
Then you have to learn how to just relax that feeling.
Your mindfulness is the dial which will tell you whether the discomfort is getting worse or getting less.
When you notice it gets less,
Whatever you did to make it less,
Give it some more.
See if you can relax your body,
Especially the irritating parts,
To the point they almost totally disappear.
Okay.
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And only when my body starts to feel really comfortable and relaxed,
When there's no pressure anywhere,
When everything is loose,
When it feels good,
Then I know that my body is ready for the purposes of meditation.
And then I let my body disappear as I focus on my mental world,
All this past and future stuff.
I know my job is not to judge,
Not to try and get rid of,
Not to try and get something.
I'm just aware of this object in my mind right now,
Whatever it is,
Whatever you are aware of in this moment is the most important object in the whole world.
Don't judge it or choose what you're aware of,
Just be fully aware and just relax,
Be kind.
Because your job is not to get somewhere,
It's not to achieve things,
It's just to be,
To be still and let your awareness grow in power through stillness.
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Just being aware of this moment and trying to take away all wants,
All don't likes,
Just making stillness the most important thing.
You need to rest and get energy.
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So it's getting close to the end of the meditation now.
How do you feel?
How much stillness is here right now?
And how does contentment feel like?
And now I'm going to ring the gong three times to end the meditation.
Would the last sound from the gong vanishes?
Open your eyes.
Very nice.
Very good.
Now usually we have some questions from overseas.
Is there any questions on the machine?
While we're waiting,
Is there any questions from here about the meditation today?
Very good.
That makes me feel happy.
You were so content as I say,
You never wanted anything in the world.
So the mind was so still it can't even ask a question.
But we got one from Germany.
Dear Ajahn Brahm,
To best avoid a wandering mind is it best to focus slightly under the navel as the head is the intellectual centre and the chest the emotional centre.
Would the place under the navel be best to focus during meditation?
It depends.
Especially if you're a person who hasn't had a good lunch and is waiting for dinner.
Then if you focus under the navel it's too close to your tummy and you'll start thinking about what you're going to have for dinner tonight.
There's a little cartoon which somebody sent me,
We have it,
John Grove posted on the notice board about one guy sitting next to another in the meditation class and in the balloon above his head is how does he keep us focusing on one thing for such a long time,
Regarding his brother sitting meditation next to him.
And the balloon in the guy in the next,
Sitting next to him was saying what he was focusing on.
Yes,
He was focused on one thing for such a long time.
What's for dinner?
What's for dinner?
What's for dinner?
What's for dinner?
It's easy to focus on those things.
But the problem is that it is just sometimes a bit too close to the tummy if you're hungry.
So the best to avoid a wandering mind,
Of course that is one of the most difficult obstacles in meditation.
I usually start to tell people that find out what the cause of a wandering mind is.
And then actually once you understand why it wanders,
Then maybe you can actually overcome it.
If you just try and suppress it and you're not really addressing the cause but you're just suppressing the symptoms,
You usually get very very frustrated.
And so the cause of a wandering mind is lack of contentment.
You're not happy here.
You're not finding satisfaction in this moment.
So the mind will automatically go and seek for something to do.
It's a quality which many people recognise as boredom.
And I remember when I was a young guy,
You get bored,
You look on the TV,
What's on the TV?
And those days it was only three channels.
Still I couldn't find anything on.
How you guys when you got 60,
80 channels,
How you could not find anything interesting on is beyond me.
Then you go into the refrigerator.
Refrigerators are huge,
Look inside there,
There's nothing to eat,
Even though stuff is falling out.
Then you got what to read,
You got whole libraries of books there,
You got kindles,
You can get any piece of literature from the whole world with a click of a button,
And no,
Nothing to read.
You can see that what's happening there is this is a lack of contentment,
A happiness with simple things,
Which is why we always go and seek for excitement,
Satisfaction,
Anywhere.
That's the main reason the wandering mind,
Just how our body moves.
Same reason our mind moves,
Cos we're not happy where we are.
We're not appreciating where we are.
That's why I often just give talks on this,
Why is it next weekend is Anzac weekend?
It's a long weekend.
What are you going to do on a long weekend next week?
Have you got plans?
Or are you just going to stay at home and do nothing?
So a lot of people are going to go down south,
Go up north to get away from it all.
When they go down south,
They find all their friends are also down south.
They haven't gone away at all,
They just don't know what other people have done.
Why is it this beautiful house which you've built or apartment with the best bed in the world is the one you sleep in,
The best food is the one that you can cook in your own apartment?
Why is it that people want to leave as soon as they have an opportunity just to enjoy it?
Why is it that people leave their mind and go off into the past,
The future,
Fantasies,
Wander all over the place?
When at last it's time for meditation,
Time off when you don't have to do anything.
You just be in this apartment,
Call your mind,
And you just keep wandering off.
The reason is we don't appreciate our own apartment,
We don't appreciate our house.
This is one of the problems,
We don't appreciate just being here,
Just how wonderful that is.
Sometimes I give a simile of being in the present moment which is not going anywhere,
Not wandering off.
Being in the present moment at first is like sitting on a whole bumpy cold stone seat.
It's not comfortable at first.
But you sit there anyway,
I'm not going to go wandering off,
I'm going to stay here.
So it is good,
I think,
To do a little bit of nudging,
A little bit of saying,
Now I'm going to stay,
I'm not going to go off into the past or the future,
Go fantasizing or dreaming.
I've done that before,
Now I'm going to stay here.
At first it's uncomfortable.
But you stay in the present moment a little time and it gets more and more comfortable every second,
More and more delightful every second.
It's like sitting on the stone bench and after a couple of seconds,
Maybe because you're fidgeting,
You rub it smooth.
After a little while it becomes quite soft.
After another little while it becomes quite warm,
It becomes the most comfortable place you could ever sit on.
This hard bumpy stone seat turns into the most amazing comfortable sofas.
This is just what happens with the present moment.
At first maybe it's difficult to stay there,
Just keep yourself there for a few moments and then it gets more and more comfortable and after a while you wonder why you want to go anywhere else.
That's why it happens when you do some meditation.
What happens to me on this Saturday afternoon,
You do 40-45 minutes meditation,
I don't want to come out,
I don't want to open my eyes.
Why do I want to leave this comfortable,
Peaceful,
Beautiful place called inner stillness?
But anyway we come out and this is the reason why we have a wandering mind,
Lack of contentment,
Contentment very often a lack of appreciation.
You see that with so many parts of our modern life,
People find a partner in life,
They can't stick together,
See all the faults in their partner,
They can't find contentment with him or her.
Yeah,
They're not the best but they're good enough.
And this is one of the reasons why we go wandering off from partner to partner in life,
Why we can't find anybody.
It's that same type of wandering,
Always looking for something better.
So instead of that we just have contentment,
Contentment just to be here,
Contentment with the person you have,
Contentment with the things you have,
Contentment with this body and mind of yours.
When you develop that contentment,
You don't wander off.
One of the reasons why we don't get contentment is,
As I said in the beginning of this meditation,
Because we have so many goals and things we want to achieve.
So maybe meditating and your mind is wandering and I don't want it to wander,
I want to get in jhanas,
At least I want to be able to watch the breath.
That is a cause for the wandering mind because you want something.
When you want something,
You agitate your mind.
When your mind is agitated,
It has thoughts on the surface and those thoughts on the surface is what we recognize as a wandering mind.
It comes from wanting something.
Imagine you didn't want anything in the whole world.
You're totally content,
Just happy to be here.
Happy to be here means you don't need to go anywhere.
What drives a wandering mind is discontent and the wanting which comes as a result of discontent.
So if you want to be still,
Give up all of this judging of good and bad,
Of wanting something and see if you can just be,
Be here and just be grateful for what's going on in this moment because you're grateful you don't want anything.
You'll find the very force which drives the wandering mind is stopped and the mind wanders less and less and less until it stops altogether,
Perfectly content,
No reason to wander from where you are.
You're still.
That's how it works in meditation.
It's not that hard when you understand what's going on.
If you want something,
You agitate your mind and go thinking all over the place.
Does that make any sense?
Any questions,
Comments,
Complaints,
Arguments?
No arguments?
Yes,
Okay,
Thank you.
Is a dull mind caused through the same thing?
You can't just sharpen if you want to?
Exactly.
If you have a dull mind,
As we call in Buddhism,
Old karma.
You're dull because you're tired,
You've been working too hard,
Maybe some sickness going on in the body,
A lot of things you had to do in the past week,
Of course you're going to be tired and dull.
But the way to overcome the dull mind is just letting it be.
Don't fight it for goodness sake because when you fight the dull mind,
You're wasting energy.
You haven't got much energy,
That's why it's dull.
Just be with it and be kind to it.
Dull mind,
I love you.
You're just such a beautiful mind,
Thank you so much for being dull.
And if you have this sense of just acceptance and being with things,
You find that you're not doing anything,
You're just being here and the energy starts to come back.
The dull mind is like a mist in the mind and just the sun of kindness comes and just melts it all away.
It is like the mist in the morning,
It just vanishes little by little,
Gradually.
And you find you're awake,
No dullness anymore.
Because you do know that I work very hard and there are times when I'm just very mentally tired and I start meditating,
I'm dull.
I don't know exactly what to do with it.
I just sit here,
Just be dull.
I don't fight at all,
I've done that too many times and it just makes the dullness last.
Just be still,
Be peaceful,
This is good enough,
This dullness in front of me,
It's the most important object in the world,
I'm just dull.
And it just gets less and less dull and soon you just wake up and you get really peaceful and you get energized.
That's why even the Korean TV crew,
That's probably they'll be coming tomorrow,
They were asking me,
Where do you get your energy from?
And I say from stillness.
And that's actually very true and very powerful insight.
You keep still,
You get energy back and the dullness vanishes.
Popeye had his spinach,
I have my stillness.
What did Superman have?
No,
He said kryptonite was what killed him.
Where did he get his energy from?
I don't know,
Anyway.
But Popeye has spinach,
Yeah.
Yeah,
Go on.
What about obsessive thoughts?
Oh yeah,
Obsessive thoughts,
It goes on and on and on and on.
Yeah,
By the time it gets to the obsessive thoughts,
Then sometimes just letting it be,
Which is they go on and on and on throughout the whole meditation session.
So sometimes to get the obsessive thoughts away,
Sometimes you can go back to your body,
Feel your body.
And that's sort of the bodily feelings,
Always in this present moment,
They're always there for you and actually they can give you another perspective.
You're not sucked in to the obsessive thoughts,
You're somewhere else,
Feeling the body,
Feeling your bum on the seat,
The pressure on it,
Feeling the ache in the leg,
The heat,
Whatever it is.
If it's on a retreat from people who have obsessive thoughts,
I tell them,
Take your shoes off,
Get out and have a walk in the forest.
Take off all the jumpers and the blankets and just feel cold,
Feel the weather,
Don't insulate yourself from it,
Get your hair wet in the rain.
You can have a shower afterwards,
You're not going to die from getting wet in the rain.
Remember when we were kids?
We used to run around in the rain,
Play snowballs,
Have great fun,
We were actually alive.
These days we cover ourselves up with so much layers of protective clothing,
We're not really in life anymore.
So that's a good way to get you actually into the body and then all these obsessive thoughts,
They don't last that long,
You're back in reality.
So that's one way of doing it with getting on to your bodily sensations.
And then you go back and just,
You see these thoughts are totally a waste of time.
We go round and round,
Never get you anywhere except headaches and tired.
Very good.
Any other questions before we finish off?
Yes?
Yes,
We have,
What happens when you start meditating?
Ajaan,
What happens if it like when you start meditating your body's alright,
But as you move along the body becomes,
You feel pain in some places and it gets more and more prominent?
If the pain gets more and more prominent,
Then move,
Scratch.
Because it's a sign,
The pain is a sign that you haven't got a good posture,
That somehow or other there's a difficulty there.
So if you can,
Just move a little bit,
Just adjust.
And yeah,
That disturbs the stillness,
But the disturbance is far less than the disturbance given to you by the pain.
So yeah,
You got a sort of sonic,
Just move it around a little bit,
Whatever,
Until it feels good and you disturb the stillness.
But you soon get back to where you were before and you can make it deeper.
You stay with the pain,
You just get stuck there.
And this is not pain meditation.
You have enough pain in life.
Pain looking after husbands,
Pain looking after wives,
Pain going to work in the morning,
Too much pain in life.
So this is peace and freedom,
Stillness and happiness.
So if you have pain,
Please move.
Very good.
So now it's the time for me to move because it's gone past 4.
15,
So we're going to pay respects to Buddha,
Minsanga,
And then it's the time for more questions,
You come up and ask them personally.
