Day 055/365: 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

And just to begin with, If anybody's wondering why we have a stack of cauliflowers on the shrine, Because somebody asked me, Because I have a bit of a cough, An allergy, And people ask me, So what flowers can we put on the shrine which won't give you allergies? So I said cauliflowers, That's what they're doing over there. So anyway, It's a great flower to put in your garden. So if it's your partner's birthday or something, You want to give her a gift of flowers, Cauliflowers. It's a flower, That's what it says. Anyway, There we go. So anyway, Welcome to today's meditation class, There's still some more people streaming in, Or rather like trickling in, Or maybe you call it drizzling in, Just a few people coming in. So, And for those people who've come to the Introduction to Meditation sessions, A series of four classes which teach you the basics of meditation. That's being held in the room to my right. And here we have the advanced adepts group of meditators. Does that make sense? Okay, Very good. Anyway, Just those people who've meditated before. Because here we don't just do the general bits of meditation, We do just specific parts of it to teach those, To inspire and get people going in their deep meditations. And I've just been overseas teaching meditation retreats. And one of the things which sometimes comes up when you get into a deep meditation, What happens sometimes is you get excited. And sometimes people's heart starts beating fast. It's not that you're having a heart attack, It's not dangerous, I've never lost anyone in a meditation retreat, No one has died, They haven't ended up in a box after my meditation retreat or during my meditation retreat. But what has happened is sometimes they get a bit scared. And they wonder what to do when your heart starts to beat, You know, Irregularly. All it really is, Is you get excited or afraid, You're getting into some deep states of meditation where maybe you haven't been before and it's a little bit, Number one, Strange. If you know what's going on, Sometimes you get excited, Wow, Something's happening at last, This is good stuff, It's very enjoyable, Very peaceful. Or sometimes people get afraid, It's a bit too much for me. Either way, So they get a little bit excited. So how to deal with that? If you just focus on your heart and say, Calm down my throbbing heart, That does not work. Because giving attention to it usually makes it worse. So there is another skillful means and once you know what that skillful means is, We can actually use that in many other areas of meditation. And that is a skillful means which I call like zooming in. And what that means is, Or where it comes from, That years ago, You know, When I used to go in the aircraft and you always have to watch the in-flight video for the safety video, And you focus on this little screen in the seat in front of you to watch people just say what to do if the aircraft crashes. And, I don't know, None of it would work anyway if the aircraft crashes crashed and they're gone anyway. So anyway, Though you pay attention being a good traveler. And when you see that first of all, I see the upholstery of the seat in front of me, The plastic rim of the screen and the screen, What I noticed was after a few seconds, I was not aware of the upholstery anymore, Not even the plastic edge of the screen. As if my mind was focusing in, Was focusing in on the image and it just zoomed in and zoomed in just enough so the image could actually fit my mind or my mind could fit in the image, Whatever way you wish to look at it. But certainly it zoomed in and stopped when the image was filling my mind and I just could not see. I just zoomed in and I could not see the upholstery or the plastic edge. In fact, That had literally fallen off my radar as they say these days. You zoomed in and stopped when it was just enough for you to see. And that is why even these days I don't have a mobile phone, Please don't get me a mobile phone. I know this morning on arms route some kid almost dropped his mum's mobile phone into my bowl and I was about to think, Oh, Thank you for that donation, The cell phone. Anyway, The reason we don't have cell phones is because cell phones, They just imprison you. People are looking at them all the time. That's why they call them cell phones. And you always look and see how many bars on the cell phone, You always look and see how much you're imprisoned by it. But anyway, So we don't have cell phones, But we do just have computers. But anyway, When we are looking, I've seen people in the aircraft, They're actually watching a movie on their cell phone. They've got this tiny screen and they can watch a movie on it. How can you do that? It's just tiny. But actually what happens is as soon as you look on it, It's like your mind just fits perfectly into the screen. It zooms in just enough and they have a very valid experience of watching the movie with joy and happiness. You don't need these huge big screens which people have in their house. Just a small screen is good enough. But especially it showed me the art of zooming in on something. So if you are just having a heartbeat, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Because something's happening in the meditation and you get excited or afraid, For goodness sake, Don't put the distraction, The disturbance in the center of your screen. Keep your main meditation object, Which hopefully should be the breath, Delightful breath, It's getting very peaceful, Keep that in the center of your screen. So you're focusing on the delightful breath. Yes, You're not trying to get rid of the disturbance of a fast heartbeat. You know that but it's in the edge somewhere. You don't, If you're worried about it, Concerned about it, If it's a problem for you, It's like you put the heartbeat in the center. You want to settle that down before you go back to the breath. That doesn't work. You've lost the breath. You hear the breath over here somewhere but it's not centered. So keep your main meditation object in the center. Feel the breath go in, Go out. It's going very peaceful, It's about to disappear, Boom, Boom, Boom, The heart starts to really beat fast. Let it beat fast. I can hear it but it's over here somewhere but I'm zooming in on my breathing when it gets delightful. And what that means is after a while you can't feel the heartbeat anymore. It's not that the heart has stopped, You've had a heart attack and you're dead. No, It's just it's off your screen. When it's off your screen it works naturally and without sort of you interfering with it. And the usual example which I do to show what I mean is, Now please be aware of the saliva in your throat. Now if you are aware of the saliva in your throat, You probably have to swallow. Now it is a disturbance because it's in the center of your field of attention. But after a few minutes when I don't talk about saliva anymore, Then you just think about something else. It becomes calm down without your attention. Same way with the heartbeat. If you stay on the breath, Leave the heartbeat alone. You focus in on the breathing, Heartbeat just falls off the screen and soon, If you ever want to go back to it, It's normal again. The same with any other disturbances. I don't know, It's supposed to be a rainy day today. I don't see much rain, A little bit of rain, But if it starts to really pour down just in the next half an hour or so, You may be able to hear the rain. But don't center on the sound of the rainfall. Center on your breath, Center inside. And after a while, The sound of the rainfall falls off your screen. You can't hear it anymore, You're focusing in. It's not that odd or strange to do that. A lot of times people can focus in on a movie, On the TV. As I can't say who this couple were, It would embarrass them. They're members of our Buddhist society and they would be great meditators, But I don't think they do much meditation these days. But anyhow, They were watching a movie at home. And that was the couple after the movie finished. They went up to go to the toilet, Make a cup of tea, And they found burglars had been in their house while they were watching their movie, Stealing things right behind them. When they got up, The things in the shelves right behind their sofa, Valuable things were missing. And I said to them, My goodness, You were really focused in on that TV show. If you could only do that with your breath, You'd be amazing meditators. What happens if somebody makes a noise? There's a sound of somebody decides, As has happened many times, On a Saturday afternoon between three and four o'clock, They decide to mow their lawn. Or sometimes you had somebody who was always fixing up motorbikes on Saturday afternoon around the back. And then you'd just be getting into a meditator, Vroom, Vroom, Vroom, Vroom, Vroom, Vroom. Is that a good interpretation of a motorbike? I don't think so anyway, But you get the message. Anyway, That sometimes if you start focusing on the sound of the motorbike, You'll notice in this metaphor, It's like the sound of the motorbike comes to the center of your screen. It's disturbing you. You can't find the breath because you're worried about the disturbance of the sound of a motorbike or the sound of someone mowing their lawn. But if you remember the simile, You keep the breath, Your main object, In the center of the screen. Obviously it becomes to nimittas or something else, Which is your main object, Keep it in the center of the screen. And just like that couple watching the movie, They won't be able to hear the burglar. They won't be able to hear the motorbike. They won't be able to hear the sound of mowing the lawn. We focused in and everything else falls off the screen, Just like just watching the safety video on the aircraft. You could not see. What was just to the left and right, Up and above the screen, It was focusing. It was a natural process because the mind just usually takes what is most important and just zooms in on it. And so that's how we overcome many, Many distractions. Also it may be that you have ache or pain in the body while you're meditating, Which is also very common. If you have an ache and pain in the body, It's not too big, Then just keep the object of the breath, Say, As the main object and you zoom in on the breath. And it's just the irritation on the knees or the legs or wherever else you've got the irritation falls off the screen, But you zoom in and everything else you're not really aware of. And even if, You know, If it's not too bad a pain, I don't want to cripple anybody or have you go to hospital afterwards, But if it's not too bad a pain, Then again, Just keeping the breath in the center, Just washing your breath, And then the pain is, I can feel it but it's over there somewhere. It's not central to me. It's not my main object. And after a while, You can't feel that pain, Because you haven't focused on it. You're focused on an alternative. Zoomed in on that and what's on the outside disappears. That's how we deal with disturbances. And sometimes I just come back from overseas. One of the meditation questions which I got on Thursday night, It was really cute, Because it was for a 10 year old. And the 10 year old girl said, How can, What advice can you give me to stop my younger sister disturbing me when I try to meditate? She was 10 years of age. It was really cute. And because the younger sister was just a bit jealous, Wanted some attention, Was a bit bored. I said, No, Just focus in. Just on what you're feeling. And your little sister is on the edge somewhere, Way over here. And after a while, She'll leave your land. She'll get bored when she knows you cannot disturb her. That's how to deal with distractions. And it's also especially how to deal with that distraction, Which comes up in deep meditation of excitement or fear, Which often manifests as a heartbeat going a little bit too strong, Or because of fear or excitement. Going to powerful places you haven't been before, Or excitement because you've heard me say all these blisses of jhanas and nimittas, And now they're happening, Yeah, But the heart gets a bit, Gets a bit excited. Okay. So that is some instructions for this morning. Even if you don't ever get to anywhere close to that, Don't worry because sometimes you do. Sometimes you get to a nice place and you surprise yourself, You're getting really, Really peaceful, You get excited. And this is how I learnt from teachers, That they gave instructions which were way beyond me, But somehow or other those instructions, They stayed in my mind, Like seeds in the desert, Waiting for the rain. And when you got close to those stages and you started to feel the heartbeat, Hey, I remember my teacher talking about that years ago, And it comes to help you. It's weird how many of you may have had that phenomenon before, You think these instructions, Oh maybe not for me, I'm not at that stage. Doesn't matter. Those are the instructions which will stay with you in your subconscious, If you like to use that term. When it's needed, It will come to assist you. Okay, So now if you'd like to get into your meditation posture, Whichever that happens to be, And we'll start the meditation in about one or two minutes. And again, If anyone's coming late, This is the ongoing meditation class, We're going to do a 40-45 minute meditation. If that's a bit too much for you, When you're in the wrong room, Doesn't matter, You can stay here, And after 30 minutes you can always move but quietly. Oops. So, My usual practice is to give a guidance for the first 10 or 15 minutes, And then be quiet, And then just start speaking again, Just one or two or three minutes before the meditation, Just to ease a person from quietness, I hope, Back into the world. What I never like doing is being a loud gong without any warning towards the end, Because as my teacher Ajahn Chah used to say, That's like pouring hot water into an ice cold glass. It cracks. So it's good to come out of the meditation gently, Gradually. Sitting here, First of all I do pay attention to my body, Be aware of it. Just a general awareness to begin with, Just to check my energy levels and how I feel. And then I start focusing on the parts of my body. I use this as a preliminary exercise to establish mindfulness, To make it a bit stronger, And kindness as well. At the same time making sure that my body is in a good position. I start with my legs, Making sure that the feet are comfortable and the toes are not squashed, The knees feel good. And to be able to become aware of just a part of your body, You simply ask a question, Legs, How do you feel? And that is the trigger which points your mindfulness in that direction, And you then can experience the data, The feelings, Sensations in your body. In this particular case, Just your legs. And I also use this to also ask my legs, Do you want to be moved? It's like treating your legs as an independent being at the end of your body, And listening to their advice. And sometimes I never ask that question, I never took the answer seriously, And I put my legs in an uncomfortable position and I wouldn't even be cognizant of it. I just assume, And later on experience the consequences of negligence. I didn't ask, I never got an answer, My legs hurt. So I ask that question. If it does need to be moved, Sometimes you have to move it several times until you get the best position. Every time you do that you're aware, And you get feedback from awareness, Is this better, Is this more sustainable? Until you find the optimum position for your legs. It's mindfulness and kindness. And then I become aware of my butt. Do I need a cushion? Is it in the right place? Am I balanced? Because if the butt is not comfortable, Sometimes it cuts off circulation, Your legs get numb. It's not really a big problem, But it's just disturbing. So it's good to check your buttock position. Then I check my back, And I notice my back is slumping a bit. Sometimes it's nice to do that. It feels that that's what the back needs, But today I want to sort of stretch it a bit. That feels much better. So this doesn't work for everybody. Sometimes people prefer to lean against the wall, Or the backrest, Or the chair. Again, You have to find what's good for you. And never think that what worked yesterday will work again today. Be aware enough and kind enough to maybe change. And then my shoulders, I feel my shoulders. I feel some tightness and ache there. So imagine releasing the tightness, The stress in all those muscles in the shoulders. Just like loosening two ends of a guitar string. And so it's so loose, There's no strain on it at all. I do that to both of my shoulders. I go down my arms to my elbows and my hands. Making sure my hands are in a comfortable position. People fidget, Sometimes their butt or their hands is what they fidget the most. Why? Because they take those parts of the body for granted. Rather than caring for them, Making sure they're in a good position to begin with. I go back up to my neck. First of all, Making sure my head is well balanced. Many people have neck pain because their head is not balanced on top of their neck. So I find the best position. And also if you have irritations in the throat like I have, You just focus on that irritation, Give it kindness. And just soothe it, Just with the warmth and acceptance from an open heart. So don't try and suppress it at all, Let it be. And move up to my head, Especially around my face. Emotional attachments, Fear, Anger, Greed, Desire, Are often expressed in one's face or features. That's why people throughout the world can look at a face and recognize that's an angry face, That's a afraid face, That's a shy face. So by getting to be mindful of the muscles around your eyes, Mouth especially, And then how to relax them. Not only does the face feel free and easy, But it's also your working on calming down the negative emotions within you. When the muscles which show anger relax, The anger inside relaxes and disappears as well. So I know how to just calm the muscles around my eyes and my mouth and my head as well. When it feels as relaxed as I possibly can make it, I've gone through my body bit by bit. I've done my best to keep it calm in a good position. And then I notice my whole body connected together, A unit, Just one, Sitting here. Because I spent five, Ten, Fifteen minutes caring for it. It feels at ease. I keep on relaxing my whole body until it feels delightful. It's the pleasure of a body at ease. It's what people go to massage or spas to feel. It feels so relaxed, It's a pleasurable feeling. So I notice the delight of relaxation. And I noticed, Or I focus on how delightful it is to have a body which is relaxed. The relaxation, Because of the focusing on delight, The relaxation goes even deeper. And then I decide to call bright, Bright. I notice the peace-o-meter. I remember those teachings. Asking myself how peaceful I am, How agitated, How distracted. Giving a number from one to ten. Imagining a little needle pointing to that number. And I'm honest, I'm not scared. It's not an ego thing, Just to be true to how peaceful, How agitated I am. Because then what I know is the causes. Why? What makes that needle go higher? What makes that needle drop closer to one which is really relaxed, Really at peace, Really still? And what's in my mind is really peaceful. Then I invite the breath in, If it hasn't come already, Becoming aware of the breath coming in, Going out. Sometimes I, To fix my attention on the breath I make it interesting. By imagining as I breathe in, Breathing in peace, Or health, Or energy. And breathe out, Let go. Breathing in health, Breathing in peace, Breathe out, Let go. And I do that until I don't need those extras. I can just watch the breath from the very beginning of the breath, To the end of the out breath, Until I'm so relaxed that even the breath feels delightful. I'm now going to be quiet until close to the end of the meditation. So let's listen to theHH, . . . . . Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Now, Getting close to the end of this meditation session, How calm is your mind? And how relaxed is the body? And why? Spend the last couple of minutes reflecting on what worked and what didn't work, What happened, And how it felt. Now, Now, Ring the gong three times to end the meditation. Please listen to every sound from the gong, Only when the last one fades, Come out from the meditation. Gong. There you go. As usual, We do have questions, Which is the last 15 minutes. For those of you who need to go early, You're always welcome. It's just too hard to offend a monk. So today we have from Germany, Wellington, And Indonesia. First of all, How to deal with sensuality meditation, When it manifests not so much in fantasies, But in physical tension and restlessness, That can't be calmed even by peaceful thoughts. If you have the opportunity to be able to do some walking meditation, Because sometimes that walking meditation can ease off any of that physical tension and restlessness in the body. Some of those are because of the hormones, The chemical chemistry in your body. But also, One sees the danger in sensuality. Sometimes it's always sticky and gets you into all sorts of little messes sometimes. So, But if it's in meditation, First of all, See if you can avoid it before it even arises. It's by before you meditate to make sure that the 15 or 20 minutes beforehand, You can actually relax, You don't just come and just immediately just watch a movie and then go and sit meditation afterwards. It's one of the reasons why that I give some instructions, I don't know what instructions, For 15 minutes before I start the meditation in this group. One of the reasons for that is just to start calming people down, To make that transition from the world outside into the world inside. So, First of all, To see if you can, The time before you meditate, Make it nice and peaceful, Get inspired by non-sensual things. Sometimes you can remember a time when you've got some really deep meditation, Some great peace of mind, Or times on retreats where you can meditate so easily. Get inspired by those things, Because sometimes if you have, When you have some sensuality in your meditation, It has its causes, And sometimes we can actually just buy into those causes and indulge in them. So, It's just like I was telling when I was overseas, The story of one of the monks, Some may remember him, His name was Ananda. He was in Vietnam during the Second World War, Sorry, During the Vietnam War, And he was shot in the back of the head. And as a result of that, He had epileptic fits. And that he told me that how he managed to overcome those epileptic fits was to see them with mindfulness earlier and earlier and earlier. It was a process. It suddenly didn't come out of the blue. You could see just visions maybe changing, Tension in his body. You could see them before it was too late, And then they became just totally out of control. And over the months, He caught it earlier and earlier and earlier and earlier, Until he told me he could see it at a certain time. He knew if he continued doing what he was doing, He would have a fit, An epileptic fit. But if he did something different, Took another path, For him it was actually going to his room, Turning off the lights, Relaxing, Drinking water or whatever, But his mindfulness and catching it earlier and earlier and earlier gave him a choice. And it's the same with even sensuality. Sensuality can be a choice. If you don't catch it early enough, It catches you and becomes an automatic. And you get entangled into it. One of the reasons is, We get entangled is, We don't have the pleasures of meditation, The joy of peace. Just the delight in just washing one breath, Beginning to end, End to beginning, Is delightful. And there's much more pleasure than that comes later on in the meditation. Once your meditation starts getting delightful and pleasurable, It just, You don't need any fantasies. So physical tension and restlessness is physical, It just looks after itself and vanishes. So you don't have that physical tension. So those are some ideas. But don't get to, Certainly don't think, Oh I can't do meditation because I have too many sensual thoughts. Everybody has those sensual thoughts when they start meditating. But if you can learn how to learn from them, Where they come from, Why they come and is there any alternative? Of course there is, And that's what you find. And then you're not a victim of your sensual thoughts. If you want to indulge in them, It's your choice, You know what you're doing. But you can also, When you go on a retreat, You don't need them. You can quietly, Peacefully meditate all day. And then the next one is from Wellington. I'm still learning to still my mind. Any advice to stop random thoughts in a chatter that just float up during meditation? Not past or future worry, But just random thoughts, Thank you. A lot of times the random thoughts is because of boredom. It's just like a person, When they sometimes are bored, They go to the refrigerator at Fisa, And there's things falling out of the refrigerator, And they say, Oh, There's nothing to eat. They go, What's it called, Serving all the channels on the TV. And they serve and there's nothing to watch. There's a hundred channels on Netflix or whatever, I don't know what I'm talking about, But I think you understand what I'm saying. And what's the same with when we get restless? We go through our library of thoughts, Something just to occupy ourselves for a few minutes. And often we go through important thoughts, First of all, And then I don't want to talk or think about that, So sometimes even random thoughts. And I thought they were random thoughts, And I thought they came into my mind, Until when you get very mindful and aware, You feel they don't come to you. You go searching for them and bring them into you. Something to do, Again, Because the peace of meditation is not satisfying for you yet. If the peace of meditation is really satisfying, You feel so nice being peaceful. A thought coming into your mind, You just like somebody banging the door, And they come in and go out. It just disappears straight away, You can't be disturbed, Because you're in this nice beautiful little space, Where you're very happy and peaceful, And random thought just can't penetrate, Because you're very joyful. So, I saw a little problem, I'm learning to still my mind. Please understand, You don't still my mind. Your mind is not yours, Look at it as like a friend. You may have like a dog or a cat in the house, But if you think you own that cat, Sometimes the reality is the cat owns you. It controls you. It knows how to get food, And it's the princess of the house. So, We like to think it's my cat, But sometimes if you could read the mind of a cat, The cat would say, No, No, No, I have a garden, This big person, And I own it. So anyway, So it's not your mind, Your mind is a friend, A companion. You don't own it, So don't try and own your mind. Be guided as a friend. Make peace with it, Don't order it around. And to still my mind, Learning how to let it be still. A great simile of Ajahn Chah, I'm not going to do this too long, Waving a leaf on a tree. It's only because of the wind blowing. If that wind didn't blow, The leaf would become perfectly still, All by itself. The tree doesn't learn how to still the leaf, The wind stops. And the leaf becomes still all by itself. So you don't still the mind, You look at the causes, Why the mind is moving, And you remove those, And then your mind is still all by itself. Anyway, Lastly from Indonesia, The stillness and peace is generated from our mind, Or our body, That generates the peace to the mind. In my meditations sometimes it gets confused, Please explain. There is a nice passage in the Buddha's Anupāna Sati Sutta, That first of all the breath is called a kāyasankhāra, It's a bodily thing. So you're aware of the breath and you calm it so much, But then the fifth, Sixth, Seventh and eighth stages of Anupāna Sati, It's then the joy which comes up when the body is calm, Is called a chittasankhāra, It's made of the sixth sense, The mind. Remember in classical Buddhism, Also Greek anatomy, Aristotle, That there's always six senses, Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, Touching and knowing, The mind is the sixth. And so when you do get joy in the breath, So beautiful breathing in, Oh yeah, Breathing out, Oh it's so nice, That is a, Comes from the mind. That is how the mind sees your breath. It sees peace, It sees freedom. So what happens? The stillness and the peace, First of all the peace or the calmness, The relaxation you feel in your body, That comes just, You know, It's a physical sensation, And it comes because you let the body relax, You can go to a spa, You can go and soak in a hot bath, Whatever, And you feel so relaxed in the body. Ever since I've been a monk, Only twice, I've first soaked in a hot bath, You know, That once was very early in my monk career, But the second time I remember was taken up to Bhutan and to climb up Tiger's Nest Monastery. You know, It's just really climbing because it's very low oxygen up there. And I always remember this fellow who was with me, Took an energy bar, You know the energy bar is like a, Not like a Mars bar, But you know, Much healthier, And it's sealed in a plastic cup or whatever, A package, And then we got to the top, It was ballooned out, It was like a balloon, Because the external pressure, You know, Was so low, And just still, Because it was hermetically sealed, But inside it just expanded. I see a Mars bar just expand. And not the Mars bar, But the packaging around it, Like a balloon, That was really funny. But it also showed just how little oxygen was up there, And just so walking up there, It was really tiring. So when you walk back down again, I indulge in a bath, Soaking my aging, Aching limbs. Actually, They weren't that aching, But I did indulge a good excuse, You know, To use a hot bath. And the body felt so peaceful afterwards. It felt so relaxed. So you generate that relaxation by caring for your body, And that's the calmness, Relaxation of the body. But there's stillness and peace of the mind. That is caused by letting go, Not wanting things, Not blowing the wind. And then, The delight of a still mind, The joy, The happiness, Even the ecstasies of meditation, They come from the mind. And sometimes I've explained how it works. It's just you have so much energy which we waste. It's just like you get an income if you're on a pension, Or you get something from nature. But if you don't spend anything, That's a pension built up. The energy of the mind. If you don't spend it on thinking and worrying and coming and going, That energy builds up, And the mind becomes more and more powerful. It's just got more and more energy. And that high energy mind state is actually where whatever we look at is beautiful. It's just because you've got so much happiness. When you get really happy and joyful and energized in your mindfulness, And everything looks beautiful, The beautiful rain, The beautiful sunshine, The beautiful everything. So that's the beauty of the happiness, Is a chitta sankhara. Every time I've seen something which should be ugly and stinky and smelly, And you all know what I'm talking about, You've heard those stories. Every time I've seen that. It's really happy and joyful because the happiness, The beauty, Is not in the thing itself, It's in the mind. It's what the mind sees when it's energized. So the stillness and peace is generated from your mind, And it gets so joyful. So this is how the Buddha described it. Even the first part of meditation, You're just aware of your body. And the peace is just by letting go of wanting, Being kind, Having unconditional awareness, Which doesn't choose, Which doesn't want, Which doesn't judge. And then because you're not wanting anything, The body becomes still, The mind becomes energized, And the bliss comes from your mind. Very powerful mind states. Okay, Any questions from the room here? Sometimes I say questions from the floor, But I forget there's people sitting on chairs. So any questions from the chairs, First of all? From the floor? Okay, So now we can actually go back and do whatever we need to do. And of course there's always a few questions that people come up and ask individually afterwards. But I would often ask, Please if you have any questions, Please actually if you feel a bit intimidated asking them straightaway, You can always sort of email them in, Or just leave them on a piece of paper. But sharing the questions is great, Because even though people say it's a private question or it's personal, I don't think I've heard every question on meditation, No habit has been. And to hear a unique one, I haven't heard a unique question in meditation for years. So I don't think that yours is special. And it's great to share it. Okay, So now I'm going to bow three times to Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha, And then whatever you need to do. Thank you. You are welcome.

Reviews

Wonderful. Learned a lot about my mind. Was able to come to peace. ☮️

Becoming easier every day to focus on the breath. Lovely talk. I like cauliflower too. 😁☮️💖🙏

Love Ajahn Brahm and so happy to see so many if his meditations now avail here on insight timer! He is (figuratively) the embodiment of the laughing Buddha! Looking for a ‘just get over yourself and chill’ break, here it is!