Day 043/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

This is a guided meditation with Ajahn Brahm. 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,

Good afternoon,

Welcome to our ongoing meditation class.

For those of you who've come to the introduction to meditation class,

A series of four lessons,

For those who haven't meditated before,

Done a little meditation before,

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

Between here and the reception area.

So that's for the introduction to meditation class,

Here every Saturday afternoon we do an ongoing class and that class we give about 15 minutes of instructions,

Followed by about 45 minutes of meditation.

So if you haven't meditated that long before,

It might be difficult for you,

Which is one of the reasons why we encourage people,

If they come to the introduction to meditation class,

The room to my right.

So every time we have one of these classes,

Some of the problems people have with their meditation,

To try and deal with those and of course the old problem which people have a lot of difficulty with,

In the thinking mind,

Always giving a commentary,

Always giving a response to what's happening in this world,

Or in your mind,

In your body.

And so to have successful,

Lovely,

Peaceful meditation,

It is helpful if we can just calm our mind down,

So that we can experience life,

Experience our body,

Experience our mind first,

Without jumping in with a description.

Because as soon as we jump in with a description of what we're experiencing,

That usually proliferates into almost like writing an essay about it in our mind.

And because we've been doing that a lot of times,

We also,

If we are not satisfied,

Happy,

Bored,

We have a whole filing cabinet,

Or like a memory store,

Of fantasies and dreams,

Things we like to worry about.

And even when people say,

Oh,

They have so much anxiety and worry in our modern world,

Still they like to have more anxiety and worry by watching TV dramas,

Or exciting movies,

Or going off to adventure worlds where they go bungee jumping,

Death drops,

Or whatever else,

That somehow that people are afraid of peace.

And they're used to excitement,

Living on the edge,

The adrenaline rush,

Where the mind is compelled to do something rather than learning how to enjoy the peace and the delight of being peaceful.

There's many reasons why in our modern world we think too much and we see too little.

And the best example of that,

These are old stories,

But they're some of the best,

Is the story of Lao Tzu,

This Taoist master who would go on a walk with his disciple,

One disciple every time,

A new one often,

Into the mountains.

But they had to keep the golden rule of not talking,

Not saying anything,

Had to keep silent.

You know how hard it is to have silence in our modern world is when they say that silence is golden,

It's worth much more than gold,

Because it's so rare.

You go to airports,

When I was travelling last week,

You go to even just going in the car and just parking next to someone,

And even though we've got our windows closed and their windows closed,

You can see the car just popping up and down,

They've got some really heavy music on.

It's so hard to find silence,

Even in elevators,

Just using music.

So silence,

This monk would always,

Lao Tzu,

Would have the golden rule,

You have to keep silent on the walk with the master.

So when they went on a walk in the mountains,

There just happened to be that day a beautiful sunset.

And the disciple,

This young follower of the master Lao Tzu,

Said,

What a beautiful sunset,

He'd broken the rule.

And at that,

The master turned around.

If the master had said back,

You've broken the rule,

Stupid young disciple,

Then Lao Tzu would be a hypocrite,

He'd broke his own rule.

He just turned around silently,

Walked back to the monastery,

And then scolded the disciple,

Said he can't go on a walk ever again with the master,

He broke the rule.

And the reason I tell this story is what came next.

When the disciple's friend said,

Give him a break,

Cut him some slack,

They never actually said that because this was in China about 800 years ago,

But the sort of thing,

You know,

Leave him alone,

What's wrong,

Forgive him,

It's only one mistake.

That is when the meditation master said,

When my student said what a beautiful sunset,

He wasn't watching the sunset anymore,

He was only watching the words.

He wasn't watching the sunset,

He was watching the description of the sunset,

The words.

That is the difference between thoughts and reality.

So if you really want to understand this world,

Your body and its mind,

You've got to see the raw thing on top of which thoughts are built,

To really go back to the heart of things,

The raw experience.

If you want to enjoy a sunset,

You go up there and say what a beautiful sunset,

And you miss it.

You have to learn how just to be still,

Be peaceful,

And just know it instead of trying to take notes and describe it to yourself.

So because of that,

The silence is essential to deepening the meditation and also to getting this wonderful sense of relaxation and peace.

So how can we sort of change our habits and learn how to enjoy some silence?

First of all,

To not be afraid of it,

To value it,

To make sure that you regard silence as even more important than the thoughts and the words over which people argue and fight over,

And who's right and who's wrong.

There are no arguments in silence.

So put value on silence.

How do we put value on silence?

First of all,

We have to recognize what silence is.

It's so rare in this world to find peace.

So once everybody is sitting down,

I'm going to just give a little exercise about silence.

But because some more people have come in in the last five minutes,

I have to repeat the usual thing.

So the one who's here for the Introduction to Meditation class,

That is in the room to my right.

So in a few minutes we're going to start meditating for a longer time.

So anyway,

So for the learning how to be silent,

If I'd ask everybody just to please close your eyes.

It's only for one minute.

It's not meditation.

It's just I want you to listen to my voice with your eyes closed.

I'm going to demonstrate silence for you,

What it means.

But I also need you to pay attention to the reaction to my words inside your own mind.

Because as I am speaking,

You will begin to notice some pauses between my words.

In those spaces between my words,

What was going on in your mind?

You find that if you're attending closely enough,

In those pauses,

You were aware,

But with no thoughts going on in your head.

You weren't giving things names.

You didn't start an inner conversation.

There it is again.

The silence between the thoughts.

Please open your eyes again now.

So what we're demonstrating here is number one,

It is possible to be silent.

You understand what it is.

And it's pretty cool.

Very attractive,

Very restful.

So why is it we can't go there too often?

First of all,

When we start meditating,

We are too agitated.

Our mind,

Using the old simile,

Our mind being like a lake,

A body of water,

On the lake there are many waves.

Those waves represent your thoughts.

So how can we stop those waves on the lake?

If you try and put your hand in there to smooth the crests of the waves down,

You just make more waves.

The waves are there because there's something agitating.

If you can just leave it alone,

Let it be,

Don't interfere.

If you protect that water from any disturbance,

The wind or ducks or whatever else,

You will find that the water gets calm and peaceful all by itself.

The friction,

The dissipation of the energy eventually calms down the lake and it becomes wave less still.

That is like your mind.

Unfortunately we never give our mind that much time to actually to get peaceful.

We always,

When we have a little bit of peace,

We think that that's a gap of space to be filled up.

It is just like even this room over here,

We try very hard not to put things in here,

Not to put pictures on the walls,

Not to think,

Oh a pot plant would be good in that corner.

We try to keep it simple because the nature of the human beings is not to like space or emptiness.

We always put something there.

So you're nice and peaceful and you're going to disturb it by putting a pot plant in your mind metaphorically speaking.

You have these beautiful mountains and as soon as someone reaches the top,

What do they do?

Put a flag on the top.

And after a couple of flags,

Then they have a restaurant.

And why can't they leave things alone?

And why can't we leave our mind alone?

The two go together.

They just,

The fact that we always want to put something in where it doesn't belong.

The thoughts,

Where silence is more than satisfying.

So after a while we leave our mind,

We don't interfere with it,

We find it does become peaceful.

One of the tricks which we do here to get you into such peace,

We start with what we call the body awareness.

Now the body awareness,

Mindfulness of the body with some kindness is really helpful because the body sometimes gets sick.

The body sometimes hurts and the body is just sometimes so demanding that looking at the body and learning how to calm it down is something which you can all know is very helpful or very useful.

It's so even vital for people.

Many people sometimes come to learn meditation because their body's got cancer,

It's got this disease or that disease and it works.

But it's also knowing the importance of having a peaceful body,

Focuses you on the body for quite a time and there's one thing about bodily feelings is that they exist only in the present moment and many of those feelings you can't really say much about.

One of the reasons why you go and see a doctor,

What's wrong with me doctor?

Well it hurts.

Yeah,

It doesn't say very much.

But you ask about the politics or the football or the economy and they say so much.

But your own body in which you live,

Now to give a description,

To understand it,

We don't even spend time making the words up for it.

That is helpful in this situation because it means you can be aware of the feelings in your leg.

How do they feel?

You know but you can't really give it a name.

Because you can't give it a name,

You don't go proliferating into a conversation about it.

And before you get bored,

I'll move you up to,

Up the body to somewhere else,

Up the body,

All the time just giving you awareness of the body in this moment where you can't have much of a commentary.

This is actually calming the thinking mind down.

And when it gets into the mind,

The body's nice and relaxed,

You're getting used to silence as being aware of reality rather than your description of reality with the thoughts.

And then after a while you find you can go into your,

What we call the peace-o-meter.

And the peace-o-meter just sees just how peaceful your leg is,

How peaceful your mind is.

As you look at that,

The peace,

Hopefully by this time,

Is enough peace and quietness in the mind,

It starts to feel good.

You know,

It's a delightful feeling to be peaceful,

Leading you into this peace gently,

Slowly,

Methodically.

And by the time you get to the peace-o-meter,

You can see just what makes the mind more peaceful,

Makes it less peaceful.

You find out it's just mostly all your unfounded worries about the future.

And all your useless digging up the past.

I say it's useless because it is.

Number one,

What you think happened in the past,

You've already filtered it,

It's already been distorted by your commitment to your agenda,

By the commitment to truth.

Unfortunately there's a lot of,

That's a Friday night talk session,

Not a sort of a Saturday afternoon meditation,

But it's a lot of truth.

We see things as we want to see,

What fulfills.

Just ask Mr.

Trump and just,

You know,

Here's the best meeting ever or the biggest inauguration ever,

The best deal ever.

It just,

That's the agenda and you see things in that light.

So when you are just in the peace-o-meter,

It becomes very still,

You're not making judgments,

You just are.

And little by little,

You feel that peace and it feels really good.

So as you feel really good in the peace,

In the present moment,

The past,

Forget about of the future,

Never cross that bridge when we come to it,

As the old saying goes,

Grab this moment,

Be in this moment.

I know there's nothing much to say about now.

Most of the thoughts,

Most of the worries,

Most of the bad memories,

Past,

Future,

Present is free.

So when you get into the present moment,

Hardly any thoughts can be done.

Most of the thoughts are descriptions of what happened a few moments ago or the fears of what's going to happen next or because of boredom,

You just go to those places or go to fantasy world just because there's nothing else to do.

There's nothing else to do.

I prefer doing the nothing than something else.

When you prefer this peace and silence,

Then the silence,

The peace stabilize.

If you feel uncomfortable there because you're not used to silence,

Of course you'll start to disturb it because it challenges you.

So after a little while you get used to the silence.

You prefer the silence and you delight in the thoughtless mind,

Aware still.

Once you start that,

Then the meditation just takes off.

You've calmed the mind down.

The waves on the surface of the lake are just tiny little ripples,

If anything at all.

And just as people do when they see a lake which is like a glass mirror,

They delight in it.

It's a beautiful sight.

The waves on a windy day,

It is quite disturbing for people.

Somehow or another,

We do actually like stillness whenever we meet it.

Unfortunately,

We very rarely meet it in our own mind.

So maybe today we can value the stillness where the thoughts stop.

If you try to stop the thoughts,

That's more thinking about the thoughts.

That's what a beautiful son said,

I'm thinking a lot,

This is a good thought,

I'm silent.

That's disturbing everything.

A little by little we use skillful means.

It's not done through willpower.

It's done through wisdom power and practice to be instead of to do.

Okay so there's an introduction.

Again,

Anyone who has come for the first time,

That might not be so relevant or too much for you.

So if you wish to go to the introduction class next door,

It's great.

For those of you who are coming here for the full session,

If you'd like to get yourself in a nice meditation position and then once you're in the position,

I will lead the meditation for the first 15 minutes.

If not so,

Then I'll just be quiet and then you'll hear me speaking again just before the meditation time is complete.

There'll be opportunities for questions and answers afterwards.

So if you close your eyes,

It's taking a lot of visual distractions away from your mind.

So you can be more aware of both my voice but also more importantly the feelings in your own body.

In particular,

Your posture.

How are you sitting now?

Now this is not sort of a training camp to force you into one particular way of sitting.

With your eyes closed,

You can feel your way into Truth.

What's most comfortable for you?

What is the best posture for you today?

And how are your legs?

This is a general question before to get yourself in a decent posture.

Now we are going to refine it.

So when you ask a question,

How are my legs now including my feet?

When you ask a question,

You also direct your mindfulness to that part of the body.

In other words,

You become aware of your legs and your feet,

How they feel.

Once you're aware of them,

Fully aware,

Then you can ask,

Can I improve you?

Are you comfortable enough?

And if you need to adjust them,

Please do so,

As I'm doing to my legs.

When you adjust them,

You ask them again,

Is this okay or is it,

Want some more adjustments?

So the fidgeting you do at the beginning.

Fidget well at the beginning and then you're comfortable for the rest of the meditation.

So once your legs,

You feel they're in the best position,

Then you move up the body to your butt.

How is it on the stool,

The cushion,

The chair?

Do you need to move it forward or backwards?

You need to make sure there's no folds of clothing pressing into your butt.

You're going to be able to maintain this posture for another 40 minutes or so.

Make sure it's good at the beginning.

Once your butt is comfortable,

Then you ask your back,

How are you?

Which means your awareness goes to that area of your body where many people can experience aches and pains a lot of times because they're not aware enough of their posture.

So try a few different things.

Try stretching the back,

Relaxing it.

If you're on a chair,

Moving it back against the back rest,

Moving it forward.

Find out what's the best position for your back,

By which I mean the mindfulness giving you feedback and the kindness,

The care,

Meaning you find the best position just for you.

Once you feel that your back is comfortable and sustainable in this position,

Then ask your hands how they are.

Where have you put them until they feel comfortable there?

You've got awareness just in that small part of your body,

Your hands and wrists,

Fingers,

Until they feel at ease,

Comfortable.

Then you can move up to your shoulders,

It's another area of tension.

How do your shoulders feel?

Be aware of the sensations,

The feelings,

The tightness,

The looseness.

Once you have the awareness there,

You're looking at the right place.

Then you can learn by trial and error just how to loosen those muscles.

I just usually imagine a bunch of strings on either side of the spine,

Pulled on each end.

And imagine those bunch of strings on either side of the spine,

Let go on both ends.

It's helpful,

A little visualization connected to that part of the body.

The spine muscles do relax,

They do go loose,

So the tightness is not there.

And move up to my neck,

First of all making sure that the head is properly balanced.

And also being aware of the throat.

Try to have irritations mostly because of allergies.

Just look inside the smoke,

Feel it,

The itchy sensation.

When I could be aware of it as fully as possible,

Then you learn from again trial and error and the feedback noticing how you react to irritations,

You can soothe them.

If you imagine the irritation getting less,

Then you can be aware it is getting less.

The mind does have an effect on the body.

Once you soothe your own throat,

Move up to your head,

The nose,

The sinuses,

The forehead,

Around the eyes,

Around the mouth.

Feel those muscles.

You can't give them a name.

Once you can feel those sensations,

That tightness,

That irritation,

Whatever it is,

See what you need to do to relax those muscles,

To soothe that irritation.

Just a way that if you want to you can screw your eyes up,

You can also loosen those muscles too.

Just something you learn to do at will.

Until the face feels open and free and loose and comfortable.

Just like the whole of your body,

As you're aware of this body from the feet to the head,

You pay attention to it,

Each part of it,

You've cared for it.

The body responds by relaxing.

You may not be totally relaxed,

But you can feel that it's much more relaxed than when you began.

That feeling is delightful.

I encourage you to recognize the feeling of delight when the body gets a little bit more peaceful.

Because once you delight in relaxation,

You'll discover relaxation goes deeper.

The body wants more,

And so just muscles loosen up which won't loosen before.

The feeling,

You're aware and it's delightful,

A relaxed body.

If there's something inside your body which is still irritating you,

Then focus on that.

Zoom in on it,

Another word for focusing.

Make sure you're really inside that feeling,

That pain,

That imbalance,

And just see what you can do to relax that feeling,

To ease it.

If you're worried about the past and the future,

It gets tense.

Be careful,

Be in this moment,

How it feels now.

Then have this beautiful kindness,

Just opening the door of your heart to this moment,

Unconditionally,

No strings attached.

Just want to learn from you,

Tension,

Pain.

Learn what makes you worse,

Learn what makes you more relaxed.

You usually find with a bit of training,

You can relax almost any feeling in the body,

Bringing yourself to a very good state of health.

Delighting in the relaxation and peace of your own body.

At the same time,

I've drawn you into the present moment,

Learning how to listen to your body rather than talk back at life.

Awareness,

Silence,

Not talk back,

Not think back,

Just knowing.

Now we could look at our peace-o-meter.

How peaceful are you,

How agitated?

Usually I ask people,

Number from one to ten,

One peaceful,

Ten very agitated.

Where are you on that scale right now?

Look at your peace-o-meter.

Now what causes the needle of the peace-o-meter to go down?

What causes it to rise?

Now we're learning how to calm our own minds down,

What makes it agitated,

What makes your own mind more peaceful,

More still.

Now we're learning how to calm our own mind down.

Now we're learning how to calm our own mind down.

And your mind is reasonably peaceful because it hasn't got that much to focus on,

Which means it's liable to just wander off.

See if you can focus now on your breathing.

Are you breathing in or are you breathing out right now?

Not interfering or controlling your breathing,

But just as it were holding its hand,

Being a friend to your own breath.

Where it goes you go.

If you like,

You can imagine as you breathe in,

Breathing in peace,

Health,

Freedom,

Any positive quality,

Imagine it,

Visualize it so you know what you're doing.

And breathe it in with every in-breath.

As you breathe out,

Any negative qualities,

Any tiredness,

Any sickness,

Breathe it out with every out-breath.

Breathing in peace,

Without let go.

Breathing in peace,

Without let go.

Hopefully you're reasonably silent now.

Reasonably relaxing at peace.

Now carry on.

I will be silent.

All right.

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