Day 012/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

This track includes several tools to help strengthen your meditation practice. About 15 minutes of Dharma talk/meditation advice and inspiration. About 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

Okay,

Welcome to another meditation,

Nibbāna or Bast session here at Dhammaloka,

Where we can learn how to meditate and make our mind really peaceful and happy.

We're literally happy because unless we develop that joy in our meditation,

The mind,

Just because of its nature,

We'll go looking for things to enjoy.

We will go looking at fantasies,

Thoughts,

We do get enjoyment,

Thinking over the past or planning the future.

It's amazing just how what to me is just a pain to actually plan all the future and work out what's going to happen.

Many people enjoy doing that and there is a joy there.

But if you find joy in peace,

Joy in the present moment,

Joy in just relaxation,

You'll find that the mind will go in another direction.

So instead of actually trying to control the mind,

We actually teach the mind just where real happiness and joy truly exist.

And after a while one gets to realize that all this past and future is just so much business,

Just so much work and it's so beautiful just hanging out in the present moment.

It's a place of freedom,

The only place where you can find any peace,

Just right here,

Right now.

And after a while,

When you stay there long enough,

The peace and happiness become tangible.

You can't not notice the joy and the peace in the present moment.

One of the reasons why I gave a simile some time ago,

It's hard to make up similes,

But the simile I came up with is the old simile of life being a journey and there's a time when you just have to sit down and rest.

The trouble is finding a place where you can sit down and rest.

The only place is the present moment,

But when you first sit down in the present moment,

A place of rest,

It's like sitting down on a cold,

Hard,

Lumpy stone bench.

It's hard,

It's cold,

It's not even,

So it's not comfortable to sit down at first,

But it's the only place you have.

So the only place you have to rest is the present moment,

So you sit down there,

It's not the best,

But at least you can rest.

But then the experience of sitting down in the present moment and just letting go of everything else,

A little bit unpleasant at first,

But the longer you sit there,

The more comfortable it becomes.

It's like the stone bench starts to warm up,

So the unpleasantness of a cold seat soon disappears and then it starts to get nice and even,

So there's no bumpy bits sticking into your butt.

So that little unpleasantness also disappears.

And then after a while it gets softer and softer and softer with every minute.

So the hardness,

Suffering vanishes and it becomes really,

Really comfortable.

What happens when you stay in the present moment long enough,

It starts off,

Yeah,

It's not really the best place,

It's a bit irritating,

It could be better,

But if you stay there long enough,

Every minute you're there,

The more pleasant it becomes,

Which is why if you can remain in the present moment long enough,

Just for 5 or 6 minutes,

It does become such a pleasant place to stay that you don't really want to go anywhere else.

Once you're enjoying and delighting in the present moment,

Then what happens is that it's impossible that the past and the future will come up to disturb you.

Just any sort of thoughts of the past,

Any plans of the future,

They just,

They can't get into your head because the delight in the present moment is too strong.

This is one of the reasons why I encourage people in the meditation,

At all stages,

To actually don't just be mindful of the body or mindful of the breath,

Also make sure that you can notice the delight,

The happiness,

The simple joy of meditation.

And I've developed that from the very beginnings of your meditation.

You've often heard me say that when you start sitting and you start relaxing the body,

You get to a stage of delightful relaxation.

The body is just so nice and relaxed and open and peaceful,

It's very delightful to experience that.

And not only does noticing the delight of a relaxed body at the beginning of meditation give you a sense of happiness and a little bit of fulfillment,

Even at that stage of the meditation,

It also,

The strange thing which I noticed,

I never expected,

When I started noticing the delight of a relaxed body,

The body got more relaxed.

It went deeper into this beautiful state of comfort and ease.

The muscles just loosened even more.

And I started to notice how delightful relaxation is.

So not only did it get more delightful,

It got more relaxed.

And I noticed that happens when you start relaxing in the mind as well.

When you get into the present moment and you're delighting,

You're just being free from all the busyness of your life,

All the things which I have to do later on,

All the decisions which I have to make,

All the problems of the past you have to fix up.

When you let that go,

You're so free.

You are like on holiday.

You have got away from it all for a few minutes.

And that's delightful.

And I've developed the attitude of really looking at that delight,

Cultivating it,

Cherishing it and not just taking it for granted.

So when I notice the present moment,

I go looking for the delight in the freedom of the present moment and it comes very quickly.

Once the delight is there,

It is just a stone bench is now turned into just this really,

Really comfortable sofa and you can sit on there really,

Really comfortably.

And this is actually what it's like getting into the present moment.

And so if you can get into that present moment,

It's absolutely wonderful but develop the delight in it and then it stays.

It's the delight,

The happiness stops the mind wandering off.

And when I mentioned last night,

I mentioned in the talk to the monks that you can imagine your mind just like a lake and the problem are the waves on the surface of that lake are going up and going down.

And those waves are what we're trying to smooth out to settle down the mind so it's perfectly still without any waves or ripples on the surface.

Again we can get it pretty calm but then we make more waves unless we are noticing the beautiful delight.

And it is also true that if ever you go up into the mountains or into the bush and you do see a lake which is perfectly still,

There is a sense of beauty into the stillness of that lake.

It becomes,

As I say,

Glassy smooth like a mirror.

And when you see a lake like that,

It has a certain beauty to it which lakes where there's waves and ripples on the surface or ducks stirring up the surface of the water,

That doesn't have that beautiful quality of stillness.

There is a beauty in stillness.

We develop the awareness of that beauty of stillness and what happens is when we notice it and the mind being pretty still,

Hardly a thought going on in the head,

The delight takes the stillness further.

It happens by itself.

So how do we make the mind go deeper into meditation?

We notice the delight in each stage of the meditation.

This is beautiful,

This is happy.

You'll find that then the mind goes deeper into peace.

And all stages of the meditation,

This is the recognition of the delight,

Looking for it,

Noticing it,

Developing it,

This is actually what takes the meditation deeper and deeper and deeper into the stillness and the peace.

Because peace of mind is a great pleasure.

It's not just excitement or stimulation gives you pleasure,

Sometimes peace,

Especially the deep peace and silence is a certain flavor of pleasure which is why many people delight in their meditation.

So see if on this meditation today you can start looking for the delight in meditation,

In happiness of peace and what they call the taste of freedom,

Beautiful mind away from it all,

Free of all of these problems and troubles.

So that's the instruction for today and as usual if there's anyone coming for the Introduction to Meditation class,

That class is being held in the room to my right.

This is the class,

The ongoing class where we're now going to meditate for about 45-50 minutes and if you haven't meditated that long before,

You are going to find this is like Guantanamo Bay in a prolonged stress position and it's not going to be fun.

So please,

Only those who have been doing some meditation before and are ready for a long meditation,

Otherwise please go into the Introduction to Meditation class in the room to my right.

Okay,

So if you'd like now to get yourselves comfortable so we can begin the meditation class today.

And I will be leaving in the first 5 or 10 minutes as usual and then I'll be quiet to let you carry on with your own meditation.

Oh,

First of all,

First of all get yourselves comfortable.

And with your eyes closed,

We can get ourselves more comfortable as we become more sensitive to the feelings in our body.

At this stage in the meditation,

If you need to move the body to adjust,

To cough,

To scratch,

Please do so.

The aim of this first stage of meditation is to get your body as comfortable as possible.

Notice something not achieved in this one minute.

You have to be aware,

Be kind.

Have you got any parts of your clothing which are too tight?

Or folds of clothing which are cutting into your flesh?

If you have then do something about it,

Loosen the belt,

Rearrange the clothing,

Feed it on the chair,

Get yourself as comfortable as you possibly can.

Now,

Let's begin.

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Now with the awareness still on the body,

There will be parts of the body which still need some more relaxation.

You can feel parts of the body which are tense,

Or irritated,

Or even painful.

Feel that just being mindful of that part of your body.

And then try to give some kindness to that part of the body.

And just watch as mindfulness gives you feedback,

And tells you whether that irritation or pain is getting better or worse.

Keep experimenting until you find out what attitude is necessary to make that tight part of the body loose,

To soothe the irritation.

And mindfulness is like giving you a gauge by which you can find whether what you are doing is working,

Relaxing,

Or making you more tense.

And after a short while,

You learn how to take a part of your body which was under pressure,

And loosen it,

And relax it.

And as your body starts to become relaxed and free,

With no tight places,

With everything loose and open,

You should start to be able to notice the delight of relaxation,

The pleasure of a body at ease,

Not under stress.

And even if there are internal organs which are some sickness or some injury,

You can even focus on those organs.

Be aware of the pain or the tightness,

The tension there.

See what's necessary to ease that tension,

To soothe the pain,

To loosen the tightness,

Even in something inside your body,

By being aware,

By being mindful of the feelings in that area.

You can even relax things right inside.

You feel relaxation happening,

And it is delightful.

So what area of your body is tight,

Stressed?

Put your attention there,

Stay there,

Notice the feeling change,

And notice what's necessary,

What attitude makes a feeling less painful.

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When the body is really deeply relaxed,

Then we can let it go.

Instead now we focus on our mental world.

The same goal to relax the mental world,

By which I mean lessening the waves on the surface,

The thoughts,

The emotions,

Until your mind becomes as still as a forest pool,

With no waves on the surface.

And to do that,

We deliberately renounce all of our past.

We let it go,

Put it down,

And say to the past,

Not now,

Any difficulties,

Any old business which hasn't been settled yet,

We can do that later,

Not now.

The same with the future,

Any plans,

Stuff you have to do later on,

Not now.

In meditation,

We belong in the present.

It's this wonderful moment,

The only place you can ever get any peace and rest,

Right now.

Like you've been on a journey and now you can stop and just be.

Not going anywhere,

Not trying to attain things,

Not changing anything,

Just being.

Being in this moment.

At first it's not easy,

Like sitting on a hard stone bench.

Stay there,

It gets softer with every minute,

Sitting in the present moment.

You are the most important person in the world.

You are the most important person in the world.

If you are the most important person in the world,

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You can watch the breathing,

As long as it's the breath that happens right now.

And see if you can notice the delight of being free from the past and the future.

The joy of the freedom from all those problems and things you have to do.

The pleasure of having left the world of the past and the world of the future,

Just for these few minutes.

It's a freedom,

It's a pleasure,

A delight.

Please cherish that.

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This is a nice beautiful way of learning how to relax the mind.

And afterwards you'll find that all those problems we put aside are not so important anymore.

All the things which bother us at the beginning of our meditation.

At the end of the meditation we put in perspective and they're not so important.

So it's not as if,

Okay now the meditation is over we can start solving the problems of our past and make all the plans for our future.

The more you stay in the present moment the more you,

What's the point?

Now is where the future is being made.

So by spending more time in this moment called now,

You are actually making a better,

Happier,

More successful future.

To get a successful future you don't plan the future,

You build it by being in the moment.

And as far as the past is concerned,

It's just a waste of time bringing it up again.

The old saying,

You learn from the past,

You don't learn from the past,

You learn from the present.

By spending more time in the now,

You get wiser,

More peaceful,

More healthier,

Everything seems to come together.

Later on you'll go,

You do your planning and stuff.

But once your mind is rested and it's clear,

You find you don't waste so much time trying to figure out what you're going to do when it's quite obvious what you should do.

So often say that investing time in meditation,

You make it up afterwards.

All the stuff and business and things we have to do in our life,

We find we can get that done so quickly after we've meditated because our mind is sharp and precise.

It's just using your brain efficiently.

A lot of times we don't give our brain a rest,

Which is why we get confused,

Why we waste so much time on organizing our lives.

If we can just let go and be peaceful for half an hour or however long you have.

You find your mind gets so sharp,

So precise,

That you don't waste time anymore.

By spending time in meditation,

You actually make more time in your life.

So those who are busy,

Haven't got much time,

Meditate more and you will make more time.

Okay,

So are there any questions from Mr.

Internet?

No.

Is the internet down?

No.

People are so enlightened,

They've got no more questions.

Amazing.

So any questions from people here on their meditation?

Please also know that people always,

They don't like asking questions in public,

So if you do have questions,

And sometimes people say they come here with questions they want to ask,

And after meditation they can't remember them.

So if a question does come up during the week or on Saturday morning,

Before you come here,

Write them down on a piece of paper,

A little tray in the back on the table there is for questions.

So you can put them down,

They're anonymous.

And the question which you ask,

Everybody else is interested in,

Because we all share the same difficulties and problems.

That's why the question box is usually a nice way to ask the questions.

So does anyone have any comments or questions they'd like to ask?

Because there's no questions in the basket,

No questions on the internet.

For the second time,

Are there any questions?

For the third time,

Are there any questions?

Going,

Going,

Gone.

Okay,

So we can actually go and have an early break.

For those of you who'd like to go to the sutta class,

There is a sutta class tomorrow,

That's between 3 and 4 o'clock,

3,

4.

15,

And I was just talking about what I haven't done before.

Because this is my first sutta class of 2015,

We were going to be talking about the first sutta,

The turning of the wheel of the Dhamma,

Dhammacakkha.

Apparently I haven't done that,

At least we think we haven't done it.

So anyway,

That's going to be done tomorrow,

The first sermon.

So it's not in the big Madhyamunikaya book,

So you don't need to bring those books,

I'll just photocopies enough copies for people.

Okay,

So that's tomorrow 3 to 4 o'clock,

Or 4.

15.

Okay,

Now let's play with specs,

Do a bit of bowing,

Get the body moving again and then we can finish off.

Okay.

Reviews

Every day, every meditation is such a delight. Love the humor and Light. Thank you for sharing all these recordings. ☮️💖🙏🕉️