Day 063/365: 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

Ok,

So we can start now for this meditation session and as usually,

Ask everybody to please turn off your mobile phones so they don't make a noise,

It's bad karma if they go off when someone is about to become enlightened.

And if they had mobile phones in the time of the Buddha,

Imagine how many people wouldn't have become enlightened because their mother-in-law rang just at the wrong time.

So please turn off your mobile phones.

And number two,

For those coming for the first time in meditation please,

The class for the introduction to meditation is on the room to my right.

This is a class which we meditate for about 40-45 minutes which is a long time for a lot of people.

But for those people who can meditate for a long time but still get sore,

That's why we have the chairs.

The chairs you may be surprised to know are for sitting on.

So if you want to meditate on a chair,

It's wonderful,

It takes away all the pain and aches of the body.

So when we meditate,

We want to try and tranquilize the body,

Tranquilize the mind,

To bring it to a sense of peace and calmness and stillness.

And you will never be able to get your body to be still if it's aching,

If it's in pain,

If it's too hot,

Too cold or whatever.

I still remember,

This is the reason why I'm very positive about the air conditioners.

When I was meditating in Thailand for 9 years,

This was in the jungle,

You get up early in the morning,

You had to get up at 3 o'clock there,

Meditate at 3.

15,

You're always feeling sleepy.

Now once I went to Bangkok to do visa,

And I was staying at a temple,

One of the head temples,

So they had one room which was air conditioned,

We got the key to use it.

And I went in there at 3.

15,

Put on the aircon,

You weren't sleepy.

You had really good meditation.

I realised sometimes the sleepiness,

The dullness,

Was just because the temperature was too hot for a brain.

If you look at my back over here,

This little stamp saying made in England,

I wasn't used to the hot weather.

So sometimes a bit of coolness and comfort,

You find you do get better meditation.

So be careful.

So if it is a bit too hot,

You always go sleepy,

Turn the temperature down.

That means you don't get so,

You get a more comfortable body.

And the comfort body means the mind gets very still,

Or can get very still.

But of course,

Even though the body is nice and comfortable,

Still people will go on thinking about so many different things.

It's the thinking which is always the biggest problem for people in meditation.

What really stops you developing a sense of stillness inside and a beautiful peace of mind which comes from that stillness.

In order to stop all this thinking,

We have to,

It's almost a bit of discipline,

But using wisdom rather than force to be able to let go of all these extraneous thoughts.

The simile I'm going to use this morning is my famous simile of a TV screen.

If ever you're watching a TV screen,

You'll find that when you first turn it on,

You can see what's to the left,

To the right,

Above and below that TV screen.

But once you're watching that TV screen,

Then soon your mind fits into the screen so you can't even see the edges.

All you see is the action,

The movie,

The documentary,

Whatever you're watching.

If you understand what happens there,

Your mind fits in to what's important and what's on the edges disappears.

So if you go watch a TV show tonight or go to the movies or whatever,

Just notice when you first turn on the movie,

You can actually see the edges of the screen and what's beyond.

After a few seconds,

You can't see that anymore,

You can only just see what's in the middle of the screen.

Using that insight into the nature of the brain,

When you are meditating,

Try and have a focus in the centre,

Something you can focus on,

Something you're interested in,

Something which grabs your attention and everything else like thoughts,

Like sounds,

Like irritations in the body,

Make sure that's on the edge of the screen,

Not in the centre.

And of course,

Here for most Buddhist meditation teachers or places,

We always use the meditation on the breathing,

So keep the breath as it were in the centre of your screen.

The breath is the main thing,

Watching the breath go in,

Watching the breath go out.

And if there are any thoughts,

Any sounds,

Distractions,

Keep them on the edge.

Can you imagine a big screen and these things are on the edge.

If you want to experience this right now,

If you're looking at me,

Focusing on me when I'm talking,

If you focus on me,

After a few seconds,

The monk on my right will disappear.

You're just focusing on one thing,

What's on the edges,

Just falls off your screen.

That's what we call focusing.

So it doesn't mean you have to get rid of the monk,

All you need to do is focus on the centre and what's on the edges disappears.

So this is how we can deal with thoughts,

With distractions,

With sounds,

Even with feelings in our body.

We don't bring them to the centre.

If we get interested in the thoughts,

If the thoughts are really of value to us and we have the understanding,

We're going to find out something important by following this train of thought,

Of course the thought will come into the centre of your field of attention and everything else will fall off.

Which is why if you're watching the breath,

You lose the breath,

You don't know where it's gone,

It's just not there anymore and you're just off in your thought land.

So don't make the thought the centre of your field of attention.

And even if it's somebody makes a noise,

It hasn't happened for a long time,

But sometimes people fall asleep and they snore in the meditation because they are tired.

It happened to me once when I was teaching in the old Canning Vale jail.

It was a high security jail many years ago,

So it was part of the protocol,

It always would be an officer with me when I was teaching the meditation class.

When I was teaching the meditation class,

Teaching people how to meditate,

Calming them down,

I heard someone snoring.

It was good that I opened my eyes because the person who was snoring was the officer.

And I opened my eyes to see,

This is no exaggeration,

That one of the prisoners,

His hand was two inches from the officer's keys.

The officer had fallen fast asleep and one of the prisoners was about to pinch the keys.

So it was actually good that I opened my eyes,

Otherwise if I had carried on meditating,

When I opened my eyes,

It would only be the officer with me left in the room or the prisoner would have disappeared.

So if it happens that someone starts snoring,

Don't bring that to the centre of your field of attention.

By which I mean,

Why are they snoring?

Look at this,

This is disturbing me.

When you give it importance,

Then you're bringing it into the centre.

They're just snoring,

So what?

It's a dog barking,

That's what dogs do.

Keep the breath in the centre so you can hear the snoring,

You can hear the dog,

Feel the heat or the cold,

Whatever,

It's on the edge.

The middle is on the breathing.

And if you can get that idea in your head,

Breathing is always in the middle,

You can hear the sounds,

You can hear the dog,

But after a while,

You don't know when you can't hear the dog anymore.

You can't hear the snoring,

You're focusing what's in the centre,

Just like the movie is all that you can see and you can't even see the edge of your TV set,

Not anything which lies beyond.

Just focusing.

And that actually is very powerful,

That really works,

But it means you have to give importance to the breathing.

So to be able to give importance to the breathing,

We try and make it interesting because sometimes people think,

Oh breathing in,

Breathing out,

Breathing in,

Breathing out,

This is boring,

How long do I have to do this for,

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

So don't just watch the breath in that way,

Give it interest.

So one way you can give interest,

What I was teaching last night,

Is give a few words along with the breath,

The ones which I've been using mostly these days,

Breathing in peace,

Breathing out,

Let go.

Breathing in peace,

Breathing out,

Let go.

If you're suffering from a disease like a cancer or something,

You can actually breathe in health,

Breathe out toxins or whatever.

So you can adjust this for what really grabs your attention,

What's really meaningful for you.

If you're really poor and suffering because you've lost your job,

Breathing in money,

Breathing out debts,

Breathing,

Okay I'm only making a joke,

Okay,

Don't do that.

But breathing in peace,

Breathe out,

Let go is a very good one.

Breathing in peace,

Breathe out,

Let go.

Because what that does,

Every time you breathe in,

You remember this word peace,

It actually starts to establish that in your mind.

Because you keep mentioning that to yourself,

After a while your mind submits and it takes in the meaning of peace.

So this incredible thing which we call peace starts to establish itself inside of you and it grows stronger and stronger.

You're breathing in peace and your mind is actually becoming more peaceful.

Breathing out,

Let go,

Let go.

Because we do carry so many attachments and many of those attachments are very painful and very heavy.

We need to learn how to let them all go during meditation.

Never be concerned or afraid if you let go of your attachments,

You're being irresponsible because I guarantee you 100% when you come out of meditation,

You'll have your attachments back again,

Unfortunately.

But at least during meditation,

You can put them down,

Let them go and be free.

So breathing in peace,

Breathing out,

Let go.

And because you repeat that to yourself,

Again it makes it that little bit more interesting.

It does mean that you have got something which is in the centre of your screen and you know if you're being there,

You know if you're not.

And lastly,

It does create an attractive quality to the breathing.

The breathing becomes very peaceful and very nice.

And when it becomes peaceful,

Nice and happy,

I call it the delightful breath,

I used to call it the beautiful breath but many people say beauty is what you see with your eyes.

So delightful is a much better way of describing this.

This beautiful delightful breath which you're experiencing.

Once you get to that stage,

Then the mind will stay with the breathing for a long time because it's fun,

It's actually really a nice thing to do.

Many people,

They meditate for a while or they get skilled at it.

They can get the delightful breath coming up.

Just watching the breathing going in,

Going out.

It's just so nice and so pleasant,

So peaceful.

It's so nice and pleasant and peaceful because compared to all the other things we have to do in life.

Life can be so busy sometimes.

There are so many problems,

So many things to do.

Sometimes many of us get overwhelmed,

Really under the pump,

As they say.

Don't know actually where that comes from,

Under the pump,

But anyway,

Here we are just letting all of that disappear so we have this beautiful sense of freedom and peace.

If any of you have ever gone to stay in one of our monasteries or gone overseas to a quiet place,

Not a thing to do in the whole world,

No duties,

No work,

At a place where you can't get any emails,

You can't SMS or tweet or anything.

Freedom at last,

I'm so peaceful here,

Nothing to do.

And for many people that is such a relief.

It is the delight of being freed from a prison of having to do things.

It's that type of delight one starts to realise in meditation,

A delight of the freedom.

Reviews

Sometimes my mind is like big wars (static) on the tv. Lately these practices have been leading me to a much more peaceful place. Practicing kindfulness. Thank you. ☮️💖🙏🕉️