Day 011/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

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

Transcript

Just as usual,

A few little words of how to meditate.

One of the most important things to learn how to let go of your thinking because it's those thoughts which are the biggest obstacle to meditation.

If we think of meditation like learning how to relax and be peaceful,

To be still,

It's the thoughts or the things which stop us being still.

And if you try to stop the thoughts,

You usually end up getting more stressed out,

Tired,

Frustrated and you don't get any fun,

Any peace from the meditation.

So that you can try for years trying to stop those thoughts coming up,

Trying to keep bringing the mind back.

That's what I was taught when I was young.

Yeah,

The mind wanders off,

Bring the mind back again,

Then it wanders off and bring the mind back again,

Then it wanders off and bring the mind back again.

And it keeps on doing that until you get frustrated about this mind.

Every time you bring it back,

It goes off again.

And it's,

You see,

There must be some other way.

And of course there is many other ways.

And one of the best ways is changing the way you look at the mind.

Or having a perception of the mind which understands what's going on and which allows you to see the mind become calm.

And that simile is a primordial simile of looking at your mind like a lake and looking at the thoughts like disturbances of that lake.

So these are the waves on the surface of the lake.

That's your thoughts.

Now if you look upon it in that metaphor,

The mind is the lake,

It's naturally calm,

And the waves are usually caused by something outside,

Usually by the wind,

But also by people messing around,

Putting their hands and jumping in the lake.

If you can protect the lake,

And if you can make sure that there's no one touches the lake or there's no wind,

Then you know that after a while the lake will become perfectly still.

So your job is actually to try and guard the lake,

Protect it and be patient.

And the opposite of that,

What most people do in this simile,

Waves on the lake,

To try and smooth down those waves,

They put their hands in and pat down the crest of the wave,

Try and smooth it down.

And of course as soon as you do anything like that,

You make more waves.

As soon as you get involved,

As soon as you do something,

Even try and do good things to try and let go of the thoughts,

You are actually creating more thoughts,

You're disturbing the mind.

So your job,

Don't try and smooth out the lake,

Just guard it,

To make sure that nothing interferes with the lake,

Especially you.

That idea of just allowing it to go naturally is one of the most important parts of the meditation.

And having just come back from overseas last New Year's Eve,

When I do go overseas,

Every now and again you get bored a little bit by sitting in the cabin.

And so you look at these in-flight magazines,

They're usually really,

Really,

Really boring.

But every now and again you have some jokes in that in-flight magazine.

And one of the jokes which was in there,

Wasn't so much a joke,

It was like a prediction for the aircraft of the future.

Because the aircraft of the future will probably be all automatic.

Automatic because pilots and co-pilots,

They make mistakes.

And if you have it on automatic,

They have number one,

A far quicker reaction time than a human being and they can sense more what's going around them and it's actually much safer.

So they said the cockpit of the future airlines,

There'll be just one man in there and one dog.

That's all.

A dog and a pilot.

And the job of the pilot is not to fly the aircraft,

The job of the pilot is to feed the dog.

And the job of the dog is to bite the pilot if he touches anything.

And that was going to be the aircraft of the future.

When I heard that I thought,

Wow,

Wouldn't it be wonderful thing if you could find some dog and person to put in the cockpit of your minds.

So put a little dog in there,

So if you do something,

It bites you and stops you,

Stop interfering,

Stop doing stuff because it's you who do stuff which stops the mind becoming still.

So what we do in our meditation,

We just get ourselves nice and comfortable.

And then we don't just watch this or watch that,

Watch the breath or watch the body or watch the person moment,

Also watch how you're watching the breath,

To see if you are interfering,

To pretend you're that dog in the cockpit.

Please if you don't know being called a dog,

Fair enough,

But that's not the meaning of this metaphor.

Pretend you're a little dog or you got a dog inside of your mind and if you do anything,

The dog bites you to train you not to do anything.

And also to be patient,

So patient,

Because that's one of the other reasons why people just don't allow the process to happen.

They want it to happen now,

Immediately.

I've been meditating for five minutes,

I'm not in jhana yet,

I can't fly through the air yet.

Be very,

Very,

Very patient and what patience means,

People don't understand what patience is,

A lot of times people think that patience is waiting for something to happen.

And of course that's not real patience,

That's actually you're off into the future,

Hoping,

Expecting,

Wanting.

That's not real patience,

Real patience is not being in the future,

Waiting for something to happen,

Waiting for your mind to become peaceful,

Waiting for whatever to come.

What patience is,

Is just being in this moment,

Not even having any,

Any perception of the future,

Not wanting to get anywhere,

Not wanting to be some place,

Not wanting to get rid of things.

For the patience where you're quite content where you are,

Because as soon as you have impatience,

You want to get somewhere,

You want to do something,

You want to get rid of things.

The next thing which happens is you go and change the controls of the cockpit,

You actually do something.

So we need that degree of patience to be in this moment,

To leave things alone and develop this beautiful contentment,

This is good enough.

When you do develop this is good enough,

It's not many people think,

If you keep saying that,

You never get anywhere in meditation,

You never get anywhere in life,

But that's not the truth of the matter.

When you don't do things,

When you say it's good enough,

Then it gets better and better and better and better.

Because when you're building up contentment,

Happy to be here,

This is good enough,

What happens is that contentment,

That gets stronger and stronger and stronger.

Actually you're building up your contentment credit in your bank account.

With so much contentment,

It soon overflows into very big joy and peace and stillness and bliss.

So your job is just to build up your moments of contentment.

And don't have this idea of patience as waiting for something to happen.

It's actually being now,

Being content with what's happening,

Which is like leaving things alone.

So when you are meditating,

Remember that your mind is just like the lake,

The waves on the surface are your thoughts.

And if you try and get rid of those thoughts by putting your hand in the lake,

Smoothing out the surface of the lake,

You will just make more thoughts.

You've been there,

You've done that.

And instead just stand back,

Stand back and just do nothing.

Remember that there's a dog in your mind who will bite you if you do something,

It would be wonderful if you could have that.

And don't wait for something to happen,

Just wait in this moment,

And be content in this moment.

And then you'll find that with that contentment,

With that leaving things alone,

Everything settles down.

And it doesn't take that long,

And your mind is really peaceful and really free.

And your body responds by being very relaxed.

And you understand for yourself the great benefits of meditation.

So there we go,

That's a nice introduction.

Once again,

Because people always come in a little bit late,

That's the nature of the game.

For those of you who are coming to the Introduction to Meditation,

The series of 4 lessons,

That is in the room to my right.

This is the ongoing class.

You have to give that warning because we usually meditate here for about 45 minutes.

And for those of you who haven't meditated before,

That's a long time.

So this is a 45 minute class.

So if you're ready,

We can now sort of get settled into our meditation.

I will leave the first 5 or 10 minutes or 15 minutes,

And afterwards then I'll let you go and you can learn how to be peaceful all by yourself.

And I'll ring the gong at the end of the meditation,

So you don't have to worry about the time.

So we close our eyes.

It gives our mind more chance to focus on other things than sight.

We bring our attention onto our body and investigate how we are sitting.

And to check whether we can improve upon our posture.

Now don't compare your posture to what you read about in books.

Just compare it to how you feel.

Can you improve your posture?

By which I mean,

Can you make yourself more comfortable,

More relaxed,

Less stress,

Less pressure?

Please have your mobile phones turned off and buzzes and stuff.

And maybe,

If that's always the case,

Your mobile phone goes off.

Maybe you can get a call tone like the dog barking,

So when your mobile phone goes off in public,

You can say,

Oh,

It's not me,

It's the dog.

When your body,

You think it's relaxed,

Relax it even further.

Be aware of any tight places in your body,

Places where there's an ache or a pain or an irritation.

Feel your mindfulness,

Your attention down there,

And see if you can relax that part of the body,

Just by an act of will.

You'll find that it's generating kindness which relaxes things.

So if you've got an aching knee,

Send kindness to that knee.

See if you can notice the feelings,

Relax more,

Get more comforting.

Mindfulness gives you feedback.

It teaches you how to relax.

When the body is relaxed,

Relax it even further.

When the body is really relaxed,

Then we can let it go.

And then we can attend to our mental world,

Like a lake with waves on the surface.

So don't try and stop those waves.

You make more waves.

See if you can make sure you are protecting your mind.

So there's no concerns from the past or worries of the future causing your mind to be agitated.

First of all,

Let go of the past and the future.

You can deal with it afterwards.

But now you deserve peace.

You deserve some rest.

You deserve some freedom.

Just like you were as a child.

You weren't concerned with what happened or was going to occur later on.

Like a child you could enjoy this moment.

Just be in this moment.

No plans for the future.

After we finish you can plan.

No lingering trying to fix up the past.

You can do that later if you want,

But even later it's a bit or a waste of time.

And understand you learn from the present much more than you will ever learn from the past.

So stay in this present moment for now.

You find you are not creating more waves.

And you are patient to let the old waves subside.

Letting go of past,

Not concerned about the future.

Just being in the place your future is being made.

Right now.

Yes,

Ma'am?

Yes.

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Reviews

Wonderful using the calm lake visual to keep my mind and body quiet. Very lovely. My mind still wanders a little but my "dog" gave me a nibble and I was right back. Thank you Ajahn. ☮️💖🙏🕉️

Everyday I am looking forward to the episode. Enjoy the dharma talk, the guidance and the meditation with Ajan Brahm 🙏❤️
Thank you Ilan for making this possible 🙏🙏