Day 015/365: 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

So,

Some of you know I have a call today.

So I'm now going to teach how to meditate when you are not well.

It doesn't mean that,

Oh,

You're not well,

You can't meditate.

In fact,

Meditation when you are sick is probably one of the best,

Because when the body is not feeling 100%,

At least the mind can be free of that sickness and it's one of the teachings of the Buddha.

Even though the body is sick,

The mind does not need to be sick.

But what does it mean by that?

It means that we try and just let the body be calm by not controlling it,

Not forcing it,

Not giving it more stress.

And how actually do we do that?

When somebody was really sick in hospital once and I went to visit them,

They had been meditating for a long time,

And I said,

Are you meditating?

He said,

I can't meditate.

There is an ache here,

A pain there,

The breathing is difficulty.

And I said,

They can't meditate.

And I said,

Really?

I said,

Can you make peace with your physical feelings?

Instead of fighting them,

We are being negative to them.

Can you just make peace with them?

Just like we can make peace with an enemy sometimes.

It doesn't mean we agree with them or like them.

We say,

Okay,

You do your thing,

I'll do my thing.

So we make peace with them.

Can you make peace with your body?

He said,

Yeah,

I can do that.

Number two,

Can you be kind to your body?

And what kindness is,

Is opening the door of your heart to those physical feelings,

To that sickness.

In other words,

Just letting it be with kindness.

Can you be kind to your sickness?

Instead of always being angry and aggressive and violent sometimes,

The sickness is.

Yeah?

Can you be gentle?

In other words,

Just looking after the body.

If it needs to stretch out the legs,

Stretch out the legs.

If you need to lean against the wall,

Lean against the wall.

If you need an extra cushion,

Have an extra cushion.

Can you be gentle with your body?

Yes.

Then you can meditate,

I said.

If you can make peace,

Be kind and be gentle.

That is what meditation is.

Meditation is not watching the tip of the nose.

Meditation is not going into some deep blissful states of meditation.

Meditation is not watching rise and fall of your belly.

It's not what you do which makes it meditation.

It's how you do it.

The attitude which you face,

The various phenomena in your body and mind.

How you react to all this phenomena.

Sometimes you try your best to have a nice quiet neighbourhood to do meditation in.

And you're just getting quiet and woof woof woof woof.

There's a dog outside who keeps barking at all different times.

Or like what happened to me because last week I was in Indonesia.

I was at the nuns conference and doing a lot of other stuff over there.

And they had a really nice hotel on Wednesday night.

Unfortunately they decided to have these birds.

Actually in cages,

It's very cool.

And they had all these different birds outside in the hotel,

Outside my room.

I don't know what they were thinking.

I can't understand the logic behind this.

They had a rooster outside my room.

3.

30 in the morning,

They started doing what roosters do.

That was the end of my rest.

It's crazy,

Imagine having a rooster outside your room in the Hilton.

That's a crazy thing.

And that was it,

No more rest for me.

So this is what roosters do.

You can't sleep,

You don't need to get angry at it.

I'm a kind monk,

I didn't go out into that and release the rooster.

I didn't have a key or anything.

But the thought did come in putting my hand in there and making the rooster go quiet.

But there's only one way to do that and I can't because I'm a Buddhist monk.

I just say the thought came up but I threw it away pretty quickly.

This is what roosters do.

So even here,

Sometimes that's what dogs do.

There's always some noise somewhere.

So is it the noise disturbing your meditation?

Ajahn Chah would say no,

Meditation disturbs the noise.

So it's you disturb the noise,

Not the noise disturbs you.

Your reaction,

That is the key to meditation.

So if you're sick,

Just make peace.

Don't fight.

Be kind and be gentle to your body.

And you wouldn't believe how powerful that can be.

If you fight,

You build up negativity,

You build up your will and that feeds sickness.

Sometimes just let it be.

Make peace,

Be kind,

Be gentle,

The body relaxes.

You get more energy up into your mind,

Maybe not to your body,

Gets into your mind first of all because you're not depressed,

Upset.

How many people are upset or depressed when they get sick?

For me,

Sickness is brilliant.

When I get sick,

If I get a chance,

I can sleep more and I don't feel guilty about sleeping in the afternoon if I'm sick.

So I had a really nice rest after lunch today with no feeling of guilt.

You're a monk,

You should be doing something.

No,

I'm sick.

There are so many advantages in being sick.

I really recommend it.

So I enjoy myself and I will never ever forget this time when I was a young student.

I was a young student with a house of other students.

I was just telling people the other day,

Because I was poor,

I was a vegetarian and I used to make my own food,

I used to bake my own bread.

But I did that for about a month and then gave up.

You know why?

I was poor,

I baked my own bread,

Tried to save money.

If ever you've done this in a house with other people,

As soon as I took that bread out of the oven,

As soon as it was ready,

All the other people in this house,

They suddenly came into the kitchen.

I don't know from where.

And I of course had to share my bread.

That was my bread for a week,

It lasted a couple of hours.

So it was economically unsustainable for me.

I had to buy my own bread,

At least they wouldn't come and pinch it from me.

But I remember being in this house and I couldn't go to the lectures in the morning.

I was sick.

I was in the bed.

Everyone else had left and all this stuff was streaming from your nose.

The eyes were just all watery and you felt like a used tea bag,

No energy left at all.

And you were coughing and you really felt that death was preferable to life almost.

And they were sitting in there,

Or laying in there feeling terrible.

And then some idiot started knocking on the door,

Go away!

And they would not go away.

They kept on ringing the bell,

Knocking on the door.

You know what happens,

The only way to get rid of them is to answer the door.

So you struggled up to be vertical.

You staggered to the door,

Holding on to stuff to keep yourself from falling over.

And you opened the door,

What do you want?

In those days I wasn't gentle and kind like today,

What do you want?

And this guy said I'm a delivery driver.

I've got a delivery for this guy called Peter Betts,

That was my lay name,

That was me,

What have you got?

And it was my old,

What they used to call in those days,

Stereo systems.

You're so lucky these days,

You've got little iPods.

And all your music is on the iPods.

They had big boxes,

And put them all together to get a music to come out.

And I'd sent it up from London and I'd forgotten all about it.

It was being delivered that day.

Thank you.

And these were big heavy boxes,

Had to,

What was this,

Two big speakers,

An amplifier,

Turntable and some,

The old vinyl discs.

And I staggered,

I lived upstairs in the house,

Staggered and dragged this stuff up to the top of my bedroom.

And even though I was really sick,

I put it all together,

Connected everything,

Put into the,

Plug into the socket,

Put on the first disc which I really hadn't heard for weeks,

Which happened to be,

For those of you my generation,

Was Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child.

Do you remember that one?

Yeah,

That was my favourite.

And I put that on and I started to listen to it and then a realisation came to me.

There was no water coming out of my nose,

The eyes had dried up,

My cough had vanished and I felt good.

Jimi Hendrix had cured my cold.

I would try that today but monks aren't allowed to listen to Jimi Hendrix.

What it showed me is this attitude,

How powerful that can be,

The joy,

The happiness,

It's energy and that just can blast away,

Sort of diseases.

And of course I've done other things like that,

You know,

With even worse diseases.

But the whole point is,

It doesn't matter,

If you say you're sick,

Yeah,

If you want to focus,

Concentrate,

Do something,

That's difficult.

Sometimes it's impossible.

If I started focusing on the tip of my nose today,

Which is what some people say meditation is,

Which is a lot of bullshit,

Please excuse me,

No,

Don't excuse me,

This is local language,

But it's really wrong.

If I had to focus on the tip of my nose,

I would just give up,

A waste of time today,

Because my nose is really itchy,

It's like a volcano about to explode.

I've got my attention on there,

It's going to go,

It's going to blow.

So that's not a good thing to do.

So instead I just feel the general state of my body and I make peace with it.

I don't fight it anymore.

If I'm sick,

I'm sick.

If I'm aching,

I'm aching.

If I've got a gut ache,

I've got a gut ache.

If I'm just,

If the mobile phone's going off,

The mobile phone's going off.

What the hell,

That's what mobile phones do.

It's incredible,

You know,

Even though you turn them off,

Somehow or other they turn themselves on again in your bags.

I turned it off,

I'm sure.

So it's just life.

So we make peace with it and we're kind,

Have this beautiful kindness to our body.

And if you do need to blow your nose,

Blow your nose.

It's not against the precepts,

It's not evil,

It's not bad karma to blow your nose.

So you want to blow it,

Blow it.

Great,

Almost right.

You want to cough,

Cough.

Because what that's doing,

You're being kind and being so gentle with your body.

Making peace,

Being kind,

Being gentle starts to calm you down.

Calm you down,

Calm you down.

If you fight,

It agitates you.

So I'm going to make peace,

Be kind,

Be gentle.

My body just really calms down.

The cold may not go away but at least it will feel so much better afterwards.

And it's also,

This is not just for when you're sick in the body.

It's the same when you're sick in the head.

When you've got these great diseases of anger,

Ill will,

Negativity,

Guilt,

Fear,

Anxiety,

Depression,

OCD,

Paranoia,

Schizophrenia,

You're a killer.

All of those just calm down,

Make peace,

Be kind,

Be gentle.

And all of those negative states of mind,

They all depend upon this underlying agitation of the mind.

All those qualities I've just been talking about,

They are like waves on the surface of a lake.

If you just look at the waves,

You'll never get anywhere.

But if you understand where they're coming from,

What's underlying them,

An agitation in this huge lake which is your mind,

Then calm the lake down.

And then all the thoughts,

Don't worry about the thoughts,

Don't look after themselves.

Underneath the thoughts,

The agitation which creates and drives them,

That's what we overcome.

We just make peace,

Be kind,

Be gentle.

And the whole lake settles down.

Your mind becomes peaceful.

When your mind becomes peaceful,

The thoughts become peaceful.

And they just become like little ripples on the surface of a calm lake.

Anxieties,

Hardly anything left.

Memories,

Guilt,

Where they gone?

I don't know.

They were there when I started,

But now they vanish.

Everything seems to disappear.

And this is what happens when you make peace,

Be kind,

Be gentle.

And for those of you who are out and out Buddhists,

Who know what the Buddha taught,

Who have learnt the suttas,

Make peace,

Be kind,

Be gentle,

Is the second factor of the Eightfold Path.

Samma Sankapa.

The intention.

This is an important crucial part of becoming enlightened,

Of getting into deep meditation,

Making peace,

Being kind,

Being gentle.

And no matter what is happening,

If you're in the busy street,

If you're really sick,

If you are dying,

Like me this afternoon,

Maybe not,

I do exaggerate sometimes.

My teacher used,

I've been telling the Thai people this morning,

They said,

Are you taking any medicine?

I take Ajahn Chah's medicine.

Ajahn Chah was my teacher.

What's that medicine?

He said,

You'll either get better or you'll die.

So I don't have to worry.

Either way the cold's going to go.

But I don't think I'm going to die this evening,

Or this morning,

This afternoon,

Whatever time it is.

So you just let it be.

Make peace,

Be kind,

Be gentle.

And you find everything gets so beautiful and so still.

And now you meditate.

That's what meditation is.

So it doesn't matter what you're feeling,

You can always do that,

Which means you can always meditate,

Anytime,

Any place,

Any condition.

So simple when you know how.

Very good.

So I am now going to walk the talk.

Actually not walk the talk,

Meditate,

The cogitate or something.

I'm going to do what I've just been teaching.

So now I'm going to sit down,

Make my body comfortable.

I'm just going to spend 40 minutes,

45 minutes,

Making peace,

Being kind,

Being gentle,

And see what happens.

Okay,

So you do the same.

Please sit down,

Close your eyes.

And with your eyes closed,

Become aware of your body.

If you need to move something,

Move it.

Adjust,

So I can adjust my belt of my lower robe.

That's nice.

And I ask my legs,

Do you want to be moved?

My butt,

Bottom,

Are you comfortable?

I really spend the first couple of minutes fidgeting,

Stretching,

Loosening.

Because there is a lot of comfort can come from just physical adjustments to your body.

Okay.

Okay.

Once the body is relaxed through adjustment,

Now we can learn how to be aware and learn how to make peace,

Be kind,

Be gentle.

With anything we experience for the next 45 minutes,

Especially understanding the underlying relaxation or agitation of the body and mind.

How tense is the body?

How painful is it?

How anxious or negative is the mind?

Just those two indicators.

If you learn how to make peace,

Be kind,

Be gentle.

You'll notice that both those indicators go towards more peace,

More comfort,

More freedom.

Just making peace,

Being kind,

And being gentle.

But be careful not to get absorbed into your thoughts.

Because once you get sucked into the thoughts,

You find you're not making peace,

Being kind,

Being gentle anymore.

You're just right inside that little fantasy in your head.

You have to have a sense of distance for what you're experiencing to make peace with it.

You have to have a little separation to notice that whatever you're experiencing,

You need to be kind to.

You need just to see things from another angle to be gentle.

You need space between you,

The observer,

And what you're watching to be able to have,

To be able to make peace,

Be kind,

Be gentle.

So if you can remember to put space between you and your thoughts,

The observer,

And the thinking itself,

Then it's quite easy to make peace,

Be kind,

Be gentle.

And then everything settles down.

I'm going to be quiet now because I've got some work to do.

So I'm going to be quiet now because I've got some work to do.

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.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

We have now come very close to the end of the meditation.

Unfortunately,

How do you feel?

What was it like and why?

Not having the bell.

Very nice.

Before we ask for the questions from other seeds,

Any questions from here,

Dhamma Loka?

If you put your hand out before the tablet comes,

You get first.

Written question.

Oh,

There is a white Toyota Yaris blocking two cars,

Number 1 DMD194.

You have a Toyota Yaris,

1 D for Dennis,

M for meditation,

D for Dhamma 194.

If you don't move it quick,

It's making very bad karma.

If it's still there in 10 minutes,

We'll consider it to be a donation to our temple.

1 DMD194 Toyota Yaris,

Please move your car or you'll be in trouble.

Who's is it?

Pauline,

Our treasurer.

Okay,

Thank you for your donation.

That's very wonderful that people aren't embarrassed.

It happens.

So if you'd like to unblock the other two cars.

Okay,

Now that fun and games we have.

She wasn't blocking the other two cars,

She was just making sure they stay here for the meditation.

Ah,

From France today.

I am concerning on if we are disturbing the noise.

I was enjoying the breath that had become soft and smooth,

Then some people started speaking very loud outside.

I felt like having some sublime quiet music inside but being deafened by heavy metal.

In the end I came out for meditation.

So is it the case that loud noise does disturb the nature of our meditation and it's very important to be in a place with minimal noise unless I'm in second jhanas.

Yes,

From France it's wonderful if you can be in quiet places and especially when you start meditating.

It's nice to build up the energy and experience in quiet places.

And there are some places which are so still and quiet.

Even if you can't meditate,

You go in those places and the places just got so much energy and stillness.

You do become peaceful and quiet.

But unfortunately we live in a world with too many people,

Overpopulation,

Especially in Europe.

And it's so hard to find places where you can be quiet.

And so you know you've got a choice,

Either get earplugs or get mind plugs.

Mind plugs is sometimes I encourage people,

I was doing this on the aircraft in my tours,

Is imagine yourself in a bubble.

They're used to the nice skillful means,

You imagine yourself in a bubble.

And outside is the rock music,

The heavy metal,

The sound of the aircraft or whatever,

Baby screaming.

That's outside and you're inside in the bubble.

I don't know,

That tends to work for me.

So just that little imagination puts you in a little cave type bubble and which means that you do put a separation between you and your meditation and all of that noise.

But in the end,

You know the noise,

You just know the noise is just the noise.

If you're trying to focus on your breath,

Yes,

You'll be a distraction.

But if you're focusing on the reaction to the noise or the reaction to the breath,

You can always make peace with the noise.

You can always be kind to it,

You can always be gentle,

Which means the noise doesn't disturb you anymore,

It's just noise,

That's all.

And I love saying this little story,

It was in the Good Bad Who Knows Book,

One of our monks in Bodhinyana,

His brother was visiting Bodhinyana and we never got enough space in that place.

So I said,

Well it's nice of him to come but he had to stay in a hotel,

There's no place for him to stay.

He said,

It doesn't matter,

He can share my room.

And I wrote to this monk,

I said,

Look,

You're getting on a bit,

If your brother comes,

He's probably about the same age as you,

One of you will snore and you won't get any sleep that night.

And sure enough my prediction came true,

His brother came,

They shared the room,

The little kuti room and his brother started snoring before he did.

Now if you are sharing a room,

Make sure that you snore first and then it doesn't disturb you.

So there he was,

Oh crikey,

I'm not going to get any sleep tonight.

But then he remembered the teachings,

It's not the noise disturbs you,

It's you who disturb the noise,

Change your attitude to the noise.

I was very pleased with him because he told me that his brother was snoring and then he started using the powers of perception,

It's how you listen to the noise,

Changes everything.

So instead of perceiving it as something negative,

Something really hard to listen to,

He started to imagine it like some modern form of cutting edge music.

And he imagined it like that and you can do anything,

Imagine just the noise to be something which is really quite interesting.

And soon he told me that the noise or his brother's noise started to become so sonorous,

Just like a symphony or something and that's the last he remembered.

And then he woke up early in the morning.

Once he changed his attitude from negativity to something which is beautiful and nice,

Then there was no problem anymore,

He fell asleep.

And that's what we mean by not disturbing the noise.

So you have a baby crying in the aircraft,

Ahhh,

Ahhh,

Ahhh,

I travel such a lot,

When one starts,

They all start.

You know you're meditating there and oh,

Crikey,

It's such a disturbing noise.

I don't think there's any noise more disturbing than the baby's crying because that's been developed over evolution to actually attract attention to keep the baby safe.

It's really hard to ignore that.

But you can start imagining the baby's cry like some sort of ACD concert or something,

The wailing,

I don't know who's wailing.

But anyway,

Start to notice it like that and give it a sense of not negativity anymore,

Making peace,

Being kind,

Being gentle with it and it disappears.

It's not a problem anymore.

When it's not a problem,

The mind doesn't focus on it.

When it doesn't focus on it,

The mind can focus on something else that vanishes.

The other way of looking at this is making peace,

Being kind,

Being gentle with it,

Is a simile of the TV screen.

When I watched a documentary on one of the flights recently,

And I noticed every time I do that,

You watch the little screen and after five minutes,

No less than that,

After one minute,

You can't see the upholstery on the seat in front of you.

Try that next time you go on an aircraft.

Your mind actually fits into the screen.

Obviously I don't have a smartphone.

I've seen people actually watching these movies or these videos on a tiny little screen on their smartphone.

Try that and you find your mind fits in and you can't see the edges of your smartphone.

The point is that you focus in and what's on the edges falls off the radar,

As they say.

So what we do here,

If we disturb the sound,

What we're doing is we're taking that sound,

Putting it into the center of our screen of attention.

It's important for us.

It's a problem.

Whatever is the problem comes right in front of us.

But if we just make peace,

Being kind,

Being gentle with it,

It's just the sound,

Then it just is on the edge somewhere,

Just like the upholstery on the back of the seat.

And then you just focus in the center and it goes.

It disappears.

You don't know when the sound vanishes.

I've never been mindful enough to notice that moment when you don't sort of watch,

Don't see the upholstery anymore because if I try that,

I can always see the upholstery.

I just let it go,

It vanishes and I just know that after a little while,

I can't see it anymore.

So this is actually how you do that,

What I call focusing.

What it really is,

Is giving importance to,

You know,

For you in France for enjoying your breath.

Make that really important.

The breath is right in the center.

You can hear the noise.

It's really loud but it's over here somewhere,

To the right or to the left.

But you don't bring that noise into the center.

If you do,

You lose the breath.

The breath falls off the screen.

If you want to know what I mean,

Next time you turn on any screen,

Computer,

IPhone or any sort of movie on your own big TV set,

Just notice that phenomena.

That once you really start paying attention to whatever's in the middle of that screen,

What's on the edges and beyonds vanishes,

Falls off.

So if you focus on,

Say,

The breath or whatever else is happening in your body,

Everything else vanishes,

Falls off your screen.

You literally can't hear the sound anymore.

If you can't hear it,

Or if you can hear it,

It's on the edge somewhere.

You're not really paying too much attention to it and it disappears.

That's the way it works.

Hopefully that helps you in France.

Any other problems,

Questions?

Going,

Going.

Oh,

It's not quick enough.

I should do going,

Going,

Gone,

The dimes and cons.

Get out quick.

Yes?

Have you balanced kind of diligence and dedication to Dharma practice with being kind,

Gentle and making peace?

Yeah,

This is the diligence and making peace,

Being kind,

Being gentle.

What you really mean is like effort to get things done,

To move things,

To solve problems.

There is the time for solving problems,

Doing stuff,

Like all the people early this morning doing a Busy Bee here.

There's a Busy Bee at Dhammasara tomorrow,

If you didn't manage to get… Was it the other way around?

Next week,

For those of you who missed out this morning,

So out of compassion for you,

We have another opportunity.

So there's a Dhammasara next week.

But you have time to do things and the thing is with us,

Mostly Westerners or people living in the Western world,

We know how to do stuff,

We know how to be diligent.

What we don't know how to do is to rest and do nothing.

And that is totally beyond us.

I remember just growing up in Northeast Thailand.

Basically,

Northeast Thailand is Laotian culture and I really respect Kon Lao.

Because you go there during the Laotian people,

You go there during the hot season and they were just lazing around all day.

And I'd ask them,

What are you doing?

They'd say,

Just being,

You sassu,

Just being.

And I thought,

Wow,

I've never seen anybody in a place like England doing that.

They were all just,

You know,

If they weren't doing anything,

It's guilty.

I should be doing something,

I should be improving myself.

What do you mean improving yourself?

Aren't you good enough?

Having just a nice time just to rest,

Relax and do absolutely nothing.

I've never seen such a relaxed people before.

In the old days,

They really had it together because this man,

Who's a fellow monk with me,

He was over in Laos during the war with the communists.

And he told me all these incredible,

Wonderful stories of Laotian culture at that time.

For example,

The big war,

Vietnam war time,

But this is in Laos.

The Pathet Lao,

That was the communists.

The government forces,

They were at war,

Big guns and everything.

So he went into a restaurant in Luang Prabang.

And there in the restaurant,

He ordered his lunch.

He saw some of the government troops having their lunch in the corner with their machine guns against the wall.

It was lunch time.

And then he saw the communists come into the restaurant,

The forces with their M16 guns.

And he thought,

I better dive out of the table.

This was war and the two soldiers from opposite sides were in the same restaurant.

But what did the communist troops do?

They just went to another table,

Lent their guns against the wall because in Laos,

War stops for lunch.

That's absolutely true.

Now to me,

That is Lao culture from the past.

I think they've mostly lost that now.

But you know,

There's some things more important fighting one another.

One of them is lunch.

It's crazy,

What a wonderful purchase.

And of course after lunch,

They made sure that one left first and the other ones went the other way.

So they weren't really into this war business,

Just some generals wanting them to mess around.

Anyway,

That was in the old days.

And that whole idea of just learning how to relax and do nothing instead of always having to be,

As you say,

Diligent.

This is a time for diligence,

A time for relaxing.

And again,

When I went to Phuket,

We taught a retreat at a resort.

And I was just looking what other people were doing there.

And we were just doing meditation all day,

Just relaxing.

And these other people,

They weren't relaxing.

They go to these resorts to get away from it.

Oh,

There was kayaking,

There was tennis,

There was visiting this,

There was shopping trips.

My goodness,

When you go on holiday,

You must get so tired.

Because we don't know how to do nothing.

So this meditation,

Making peace,

Being kind,

Being gentle,

Is learning how to do nothing.

So for the last 45 minutes,

I was not trying to get rid of my cold.

That was doing something again.

Ah,

Cold you can be if you like,

Just part of nature.

Comes by itself,

Goes by itself.

So I just relax,

Do nothing.

That's the art of meditation.

Afterwards I can be diligent.

But when I've got my eyes closed,

I do nothing at all.

Bliss.

Okay,

So now's the time for you to be diligent.

Meditation over.

Off we go.

Okay.

Very good.

You just bow.

I love that poem.

Absolutely amazing.

Totally made it.

Yes,

Young man?

Yes.

Okay.

Reviews

How wonderful that meditation can even help you when you're ill. I am so grateful for these talks and practices. Thank you. ☮️💖🙏🕉️