Day 064/365: 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

As you can see,

We just had a wedding in here,

A couple who have been coming here for a long time.

And part of their marriage vows together,

They pledged to meditate every day.

It's great to have Buddhist weddings,

So to add that little bit of extra into the ceremony.

And it's,

They realised that meditating every day calms them down and also makes them more sensitive to one another,

Which is an important aspect of meditation,

It actually works.

It can make you more harmonious and of course more selfless.

As I mentioned to them,

In a relationship,

You have to sacrifice what you want,

Basically to let go and do what is needed rather than what you want.

So that's one of the nice parts about a marriage,

But it also brings me on to just today,

This afternoon at 3pm,

Where we are going to begin today's meditation class.

And I don't know,

Is it on the line already?

Okay,

Great,

Excellent.

So first of all,

For those people coming for the introduction to meditation class,

Ming is taking that today,

And that will be in the room to my right over here.

This is the ongoing class.

As you know,

We usually talk about some aspect of meditation for the first 15 minutes,

By which time I think all of the revellers for the marriage will be gone,

And that limo outside is not mine,

It belongs to the married couple,

And they always want to do something special.

And by that time they'll be gone and be nice and quiet.

But you know that sometimes you're meditating and it's not quiet,

Even though you really try and find a peaceful place to meditate,

There's always noise.

I know that in our place,

Not so much here now,

But in the first place we had,

That whenever we try to meditate on an afternoon,

The person next door would decide to mow their lawn and make a huge noise.

And there was always,

Always some distraction somewhere.

And because of that,

There is this wonderful method to learn how to avoid distractions,

Which is,

Did I say that last week,

The focusing the screen?

So even you don't remember.

It's a waste of time asking old people what I said last week.

Sorry,

Because even I can't remember,

We're both the same age.

So the screen simile is a beautiful way of knowing how to deal with noise with aches and pains in the body or with any other distraction which you have during your meditation.

And the screen simile is imagine that your mind being like a screen.

And on that screen is many,

Many things which you can be aware of.

But what's really important is what you put in the centre of your screen.

And if you put your meditation object in the centre of your screen,

It means you give it the most importance.

It means that that is the main object you are focusing on.

And all the other experiences you may be sensing at that time,

The sounds,

The feelings in the body,

The heat,

The cold,

Whatever,

Or even the thoughts,

All those are still on the screen but they're on the edges of the screen,

They're not in the centre.

And that's an important part of the meditation because if you try and get rid of a distraction,

You find that distraction fills up your mind and that's all that you are aware of.

If it's the sound of the lawnmower in the back and you really make a big issue about it,

That's all you can ever hear is the sound of the lawnmower and it will never disappear.

If you have an itch on your body or an ache in your gut,

If that is in the centre of the screen,

It's a big problem,

And you're trying to think of ways to overcome it,

It will never ever go away.

So what you do,

You may have a sound outside of people still finishing off the wedding,

But you put your centre,

Say,

On the breathing,

So you're aware of the breath going in and out and you can hear all these other sounds but they're on the edge of your field of perception,

Not in the centre.

Because what happens then as a natural occurrence is the mind usually just focuses in onto the centre of things and all those so-called disturbances on the edges,

All the sounds,

All of the feelings in the body,

Even the thoughts,

Because they're not so important,

They're on the edge,

They tend to just fall off the edge of the screen.

And even though there was a sound there,

You can't hear it anymore.

And I was saying a couple of days ago when I was in New South Wales,

I was saying that in Thailand in those early years there used to be hundreds of mosquitoes.

And those mosquitoes would be on your arms and be on your head,

On your face and be really,

Really irritating.

And it was very hard to follow the breath and meditate when you had so many disturbances of 70 or 80 mosquitoes at a time on you.

And the only way that it worked,

You could meditate,

Was yes,

You could feel the mosquitoes,

But they were on the edge.

And I was focusing on the breath,

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

The mosquito feeling was out there somewhere,

Just on the edge.

I could still feel them,

But it wasn't central.

And then what happened,

You focused in onto the breathing and basically the perception of the mosquitoes biting you,

They disappeared,

You couldn't feel them anymore.

It was because you'd actually focused in.

If ever you watched a TV,

A movie or some sports show,

You focus in onto what's happening on the movie so you can't even feel the pressure in your bladder which is supposed to go to the toilet or the aches in your legs.

You can't even feel that.

The reason is because you're so focused on the movie,

Everything else has fallen off the screen.

It's actually fallen off the radar.

This is a beautiful way of getting rid of distractions because it works.

You don't let go or force the distractions away,

You just focus on something else.

In this case you focus on just the part of the meditation which is important to you.

So this is a great way of being able to meditate no matter what is happening around you.

I remember many many years ago,

The Burmese Buddhist community,

They were having a quiet peaceful protest about some of the political murders which were going on in Burma at that time under the military dictatorship.

And they invited me and said,

What type of protest is this?

Because the monk can't be political.

I said,

All you need to do is can you come and sit for two hours on a pavement opposite Hay Street Mall.

There was a meditation day and I went there because it was a challenge.

I've never meditated in the middle of the city,

Right opposite time zone in Hay Street Mall.

On the hard pavement,

No cushions,

Just on the stone pavement.

And it was like a challenge for me.

How can you actually meditate in such a noisy place in the middle of the city?

And it worked,

And that's actually how I did it.

You could feel the discomfort of this hard stone pavement without any cushions on there.

And the sound blaring out of this music from time zone,

The cars whizzing past and people and everything else.

You just focus inside on the breath.

You could feel those and see those,

You could hear those things and feel the cold pavement under your bum.

You could do that first of all but you're focusing on the centre and after a little while you focused in on the breathing and everything else vanished.

So you can actually just meditate there very peacefully without even feeling or hearing that noise.

It's just focusing,

That's all.

And that only works if you really give,

Say the breathing,

Importance and everything else is on the edge.

Because what you give importance to is always what's in the centre.

That's like when you have thoughts in the mind.

Sometimes we have a thought and we say,

Why can't I get rid of my thoughts?

It is because that particular thought is important to you.

Somehow or other you imagine that through thinking about that thing you're going to find a solution or get an answer to a problem.

You should know by now that all the thinking you've done in your life,

99% of it is a waste of time.

But when you give importance to thinking,

Of course it will take centre stage of the screen that is on your mind.

If you give more attention to silence,

If silence and peace is more important to you,

Then you're still thinking but the thinking is over here somewhere.

It's not the main thing I'm noticing.

You know I've got this thought going on in the background but I'm focusing on the silence or on the breathing and after a while you don't know when the thinking has stopped,

It's vanished.

It's literally fallen off the edge of your screen.

You're not aware of it anymore.

So what you give importance to,

What you give value to is what stays.

Now how do you give importance and value to things?

You'll find that you give importance and value to things you like.

And this is one of the problems with something like meditation,

Especially on the breathing.

Somehow or other we have to give the breathing some importance and some interest which is one of the reasons why,

In many traditions when we do something like watching the breathing,

We add a little bit of,

If you like,

Sugar to the coffee.

We don't just watch the breathing go in and go out.

We breathe in,

Breathing in peace.

We breathe out,

Breathing out,

Let go.

You make it joyful and interesting and valuable.

It doesn't have to be peace you're breathing in.

Whatever you really need in your life,

Whether it's breathing in fulfilment,

If you are sick,

Breathing in health,

Breathing out the sickness or the toxins,

Whatever it is,

You can make up your own little one word commentary to the breathing meditation to make it really important and very valuable.

For example,

A person's got a cancer in their body somewhere.

So breathing in healing,

Breathing out tumour,

Breathing in healing,

Whatever it is,

That makes it really important to you.

Because it's really important and valuable,

That takes centre stage and all the other thoughts and stuff disappear from you.

So I ask yourself,

What do you really want from this meditation?

Whatever it is you want from this meditation,

Breathe it in.

Whatever you want to let go of,

Whatever is a problem and an irritation to you,

Know today,

Breathe that out.

That makes the breathing important for you,

Which means it does take centre screen,

Which means it's very easy to focus on it.

Once the mind starts focusing on it,

All the other distractions,

Disturbances,

They just disappear.

Even the old past and future disappears because you're focusing just on this present moment,

The past is over here somewhere,

The future,

What I have to do afterwards is over there somewhere,

We're just focusing right now,

And after a while the past and future,

They just vanish.

You don't know when they vanish,

But you're just not even contemplating past and future anymore,

They just disappear.

That is how these things actually work.

So whatever you put in the centre is what stays.

That's how we do deal with distractions from outside or even inside.

And to give importance to those things,

That's how we put it into the centre,

And take importance away from other things.

And to give it a sense of importance,

You can do like a one word commentary,

Give a bit of joy to this,

Make it interesting,

And then you find it's very easy to stay on that object.

My constant saying is,

In meditation we never use willpower,

We never try and force our way past obstacles in meditation,

We always use wisdom power.

Meditate smartly rather than with force.

So that way you can find out just wise strategies,

Different ways of perceiving so that while meditation can really develop,

Never use willpower,

And also never just,

Ok,

It will fix itself up eventually.

Be wise,

Find out what the problem is.

And use some of these tricks which have been developed over centuries to overcome the problems so you can have a very peaceful,

Happy and successful meditation.

So the limo's gone,

The wedding group have just about gone,

So now we can begin the meditation.

And as,

Actually we've only just come in here because usually people have been sitting here for a while,

Sometimes shall we stand up and stretch?

Yeah go,

Let's go up and stand up and stretch.

So I started off with standing up and stretching time.

If you're old like me,

Get all your muscles loose.

You're too young to go away.

Ok,

Now wearing your nice and loose,

This avoids a lot of pain and stiffness later on.

We sit down,

Close our eyes,

And get ready for all the meditation.

Here we go.

Just do your ordinary relaxation to begin with.

And to relax more deeply,

We become aware of the physical feelings in our body.

One method amongst many is to ask yourself what is the most prominent sensation in my body?

The one that is more intense than any other.

When you ask a question to yourself,

You always get an answer.

There's some part of your body which is warmer,

Cooler,

Tighter,

Tenser than other parts.

And that is the part you focus on in the beginning.

You become mindful of that part of your body and you use kindness to relax it.

And the mindfulness gives you feedback whether you are relaxing or whether it's getting more tense.

And soon you learn how to relax away aches and pains anywhere in your own body.

Once you've relaxed the most intense feeling in your body,

Then you go to the next intense feeling.

And I usually just do three,

The three most intense feelings in my body,

One after the other,

Relaxing each one of them,

Which gives me a very peaceful body.

And don't rush the beginning of the meditation.

People have aches and pains and find they have to move in meditation 90% of the time because they didn't put their body in a good position to begin with.

It's worth spending an extra few minutes relaxing your body.

It means you go deeper and don't waste so much time.

It's always good to be on a better level than you.

This is an excellent meditation on your own and also a yoga lesson on lesbian beings.

But what you do is you teach front of the crowd what the belief is that you allow people to sleep instead of looking at you for help.

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Once the body is relaxed,

Once your mindfulness and kindness have achieved a level of bodily tranquility,

Then you can let the body go.

We do the same relaxation to the mental world,

The world of thoughts,

Past,

Future,

The world of emotions.

You want to relax that too.

If you find any tight places inside your own mind,

See if you can loosen them.

Not worrying or obsessing about things,

Those are like knots in the body.

You can loosen them with awareness and kindness.

Any negativity is like a muscle which is being overly stretched.

Loosen it.

Loosen your judgement.

Let things be.

And how much can you relax your mental world?

All the worries of the future,

All of the pain of your past,

Like two heavy bags,

You can just put them down.

You don't always have to keep carrying them.

You never learn from the past as much as you learn from the present.

The best way to have a successful happy future is to build the seeds of such success and happiness right now,

The place where your future is being made.

So the present moment becomes the centre of your screen,

The most important and valuable now.

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It's getting close to the end of the meditation now.

How do you feel?

Be mindful of your mental world and maybe your body world as well.

Just notice how much is relaxed and calmed down.

The result of meditation.

I will now ring the gong three times to end the meditation.

Please listen to every sound from the gong.

When the third ringing of the gong vanishes,

That is the signal to emerge from your meditation.

Gong.

Okay,

So now is the question time,

Hopefully on meditation issues.

For those of you who want to ask in meditation here,

We've instituted a box again.

We can write questions on a piece of paper and then I'll attempt to answer them.

Here we go.

Dear Ajahn,

Last year I talked to you about a very peaceful and happy meditation session that I had.

You told me to time myself next time as to how long I'll be in that state of mind and stay there longer.

I haven't figured how to stay there longer yet.

Can you tell me how?

It's not really so much the timing of yourself but just to notice roughly how long you stay there.

And usually if it's in a deep meditation state,

The more delightful it is,

The longer you stay there.

It's like anything else,

How long do you stay with your friends to have a cup of coffee?

If the coffee is good and the conversation is good,

Then you're usually late for your next appointment.

So to be able to stay longer in deep meditations,

See if you can generate more what they call pithi sukha,

More joy and happiness in the meditation.

Then you'll find that quite naturally you'll stay there long periods of time.

And I always mention on retreats which I teach,

There's always some people who when it comes time for the lunch,

They're still meditating in the hall and they just stay there for such a long time.

You ask,

Well,

Why didn't you come for lunch?

Because they were enjoying themselves in the meditation too much.

They didn't want to come out.

So in order to be still for long periods of time,

You also generate this beautiful happiness and joy in meditation.

Which is one of the reasons why the best posture of meditation is not where you put your legs or your bottom or your back or your hands,

But the smile you have on your face.

If you can make a smile on your face,

The meditation is easier and also you'll find you're starting to turn the mind in a direction of joy,

Which means meditation lasts much longer.

Next question.

A lot of my friends have encouraged me to go to places like Stupa areas,

India,

Both in Yamamata to practice because these places have a lot of good energy.

Well I believe that using the teachings to calm the mind is more important.

What is your opinion?

What are the benefits of being in places that have good energy?

We were talking about this last week in monastery and this,

I think it's Meghia who was the attendant of the Buddha.

And he wanted to meditate at a certain place and the Buddha said,

Don't meditate there.

Bad energy.

And the reason was that in a previous life this guy had been the king in that area and still somehow or other that resonated with his mind and he could never get still.

And I'm never reading that in the suttas.

I know from my own experience that there are some places that are so easy to meditate and other places are more difficult to meditate.

Now I have this personal experience,

He went to places in India like the Valtter's Peak,

It's one of my favourite places to meditate.

You always have incredibly inspiring peaceful meditation,

Maybe it's the inspiration the place gives you.

Or the time when I went into,

This travelling in Sri Lanka and they put me up one night in this cave in central north Sri Lanka.

And above the cave was an inscription of when the cave was actually donated to a monk to live in.

It was about the third or fourth century AD.

The cave was about 1600 years old.

And when I sat down in there,

The monks had been meditating in that place for 16 centuries.

And that was really awesome.

So when I sat there you could feel the energy of the place.

It was great energy.

And I think on another trip to India,

We started off in Kathmandu,

That's where the plane landed at the time.

And the people on the trip,

They wanted and insisted to go on a tour of Kathmandu.

And that was really interesting,

I'd rather meditate.

But when they were going on this tour,

They went into the city,

The old city,

Past the old palace.

And I was getting really bored,

So I just wandered by myself into a courtyard which had the worst energy I've ever felt in many places.

It was such bad energy,

I didn't know why.

It was just a courtyard in the palace.

I asked the guide afterwards,

What was that place?

And that was the place once a year the Hindu kings of Nepal would do their animal sacrifice.

Many animals were killed every year.

I never knew that but you could feel it.

So there are places with good energy and bad energy.

And apparently a Chinese disciple told me she brought her feng shui master to Bodhinyana monastery.

And the feng shui master went into the meditation hall of Bodhinyana and not knowing what we do there,

The feng shui master said straight away,

Wow,

It's incredible powerful energy at the front of the hall but not at the back.

Because it's the front of the hall where the senior monks sit.

That's where the energy is.

Woohoo.

I love saying that because these are guys who maybe don't even know what they're talking about but they can feel it.

And it's true that many people keep saying that,

The places which do tend to have energy.

And we go back to the Sutras of the Buddha in that Meghia,

That yeah,

There are places which have good energy.

And sometimes she says,

How can you build up that good energy?

By obviously doing good things.

So one of the best things to do obviously is to meditate.

If people have good meditation in a place,

It actually builds up the energy which is why Bodhinyana monastery,

Actually that this next,

What is it,

17th,

Two weeks time,

The 1st of December 2013 will be our 30th anniversary of Bodhinyana monastery.

That's when we first got the land there,

30 years ago,

In two weeks time.

We're not doing any ceremonies cos now I'm not into ceremonies,

There's too many ceremonies.

But what will happen is that understanding that 20,

Maybe in that hall,

Maybe 28 years of meditation,

Great monks,

Nuns have come to that place and meditated in front of that hall.

So it does have,

It has some background,

Background energy,

Great meditation.

I know that Jhana Grove is building up its power.

I've never really sat at Dhammasara so I'm not really quite sure.

Even this place has got some energy building up now.

And people find that,

They meditate at home,

Maybe it doesn't work.

Meditate here it does.

So yeah,

As far as I'm concerned,

Places do have energy.

You can find those places for yourself,

Just be sensitive.

Of course that's not the only course,

There's many other courses having a good meditation but that really helps.

Okay,

Now we have two questions,

Actually today both from the United States,

One from New York and the other one from somewhere in the USA.

And there was John from New York,

He didn't say who from the USA,

That's probably because it may be Barack.

Who knows?

I'm taking a break from my work to practice meditation at home.

Very good.

As expected,

Things are not very quiet during the day so I meditate during the night and sleep in the morning.

Could you please let me know if you see any problem with the schedule?

Not at all.

I remember one of my friends is a monk,

He did that for three months.

He would meditate all night and sleep during the day,

Just like changes to night shift.

And because monasteries,

Even monasteries were busy during the day,

People coming and going.

So sleep during the day and at night time it was cool,

Especially for Westerners.

Thailand could be quite hot,

The night time is cool.

And it was quiet,

Everybody else was sleeping and he had a beautiful time all by himself.

So he said,

Yeah,

It was a very good experience.

Staying up all night,

Sleeping during the day,

So brilliant John.

I remember staying in New York but unfortunately I'm not quite sure if that would work in New York.

Because New York is the city that never sleeps.

Some people say,

And I've been there in Manhattan,

It was a place I was staying there.

And it was absolutely true,

All at night time,

Day time,

There's always the sound of police sirens going up and down the roads.

There's always somebody up to mischief there.

So there's always sounds and it's basically night time and day time was not that much different.

So it depends where you are in New York,

If you're in the quiet areas of New York or the quieter areas of New York,

Then fine,

That may work for you.

There's nothing wrong with that,

It's a good thing to do.

The last one from Barack,

Maybe.

You have explained karma,

The cause and effect,

Using the quantum theory somewhere.

Could you please explain that again?

The only part of the quantum theory which comes into cause and effect is that the,

For those of you who know this,

The Schrodinger equation,

Which is a,

The closest they have got,

Well certainly in my time doing physics,

Which is a long time ago now I suppose,

It was how reality works and the fact that matter is,

And this is a pretty accurate description.

The world as we know it is just what happens when we interfere with it.

The natural state of this world when we aren't around is a smear of probabilities.

And when we make an observation,

When we get involved in life,

Then we collapse the Schrodinger equation as I said and we create reality for many possibilities.

We actually create the world in a much more direct way than people ever know.

We correct it by our observations,

What we decide to see,

How we decide to feel.

That's how we create the world.

I don't mean in a light way,

In a very direct,

Basic way.

So realising that just the way we use our mind creates this world,

We understand that karma is not just creating our own future,

But creating the future of even the planet.

We do get involved,

We make,

We create.

And so that if someone says,

Who are the creators,

We are the creators.

And that creation process is this law of karma,

How we make the world,

Our bodies,

Things happen.

Just an interesting thing,

Why is it that human beings always grow bigger and bigger and bigger?

Why is it that in say Olympic games and records,

Records keep getting broken?

When some sort of doctors say they can't go faster,

This is the absolute limit,

But they keep on going faster.

Why is that?

Physically there is no possibility for it.

It's because of the mind.

We can create a taller body.

We can create a faster speed.

Physiologically it's impossible.

But when you understand just how the mind gets involved,

We can create.

And this is I think one of the reasons why karma is so important.

Understanding we have that power,

We do exert that power every time.

Because we create,

We better be careful to create things in a positive way.

To choose a positive,

To perceive the positive,

And that way we create the positive.

That's how karma works.

In a much more direct way than people know.

When I learnt quantum physics,

It was just so obvious but just so powerful.

Just how it gave much more responsibility to every human being.

Okay,

Anyway that's an interesting question,

Thank you Barack.

So you've got a lot of power to create the world,

Please create it in a good way.

I'm sure it's not Barack Obama,

I'm only playing around.

But anyway,

Are there any more questions or comments on that from the audience here?

Certainly the last bit about creating a happy mind.

Most of the stuff which I teach in Friday nights,

Saturdays and Sundays is just the power of your perception.

How you look,

What you actually look for is what you create in yourself and others.

The old story of going to prisons,

You see the beautiful part of a prisoner who is a murderer or a rapist or something,

You see the beautiful part.

That's what they show you back and that's what grows.

Water the flowers,

Flowers grow,

Water the weeds,

The weeds grow.

That's in other people.

And it certainly happens also in yourself.

If you keep on focusing on all the things which go wrong in your life,

More things go wrong.

You're watering the weeds.

You're creating a painful negative future for yourself.

You focus on the beautiful things which you've done in your life and can do,

You find more beautiful things happen.

You're watering the flowers.

That happens in your meditation too.

If in meditation you're half way through the medallion,

This is hopeless,

I'm really tired,

It's too hot,

My mind is all over the place.

If you focus on the negative in your meditation,

You create a negative meditation.

The last part of the meditation,

You focus on the positive side of it,

My mind is wandering off,

That's ok because I'm tired.

Then you find the mind stops wandering.

You're creating a positive mind.

And it works.

Ok,

Any comments?

Questions?

Ok,

It is 4.

15 and for once I'm going to finish on time.

But I'm sure I'll never let this happen again.

Ok,

Let's pay respects to the Buddha Devasankar.

Oh,

By the way,

A psychologist was reading a neuroscience paper that apparently every time you bow,

Nitrous oxide is released in your brain which gives you a natural high.

So it's actually fun and it's been proved by neuroscience to bow.

You get a high for free.

So let's get high.

Oh,

That was good.

Wow.

Bring it on.

I got high.

Reviews

Lovely talk and then sweet silence to practice. I have many birds singing loudly and yet the breath is all there is. Thank you once again. So grateful you could share these practices. ☮️💖🙏🕉️