Day 067/365: 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

Welcome everybody to the Saturday afternoon ongoing meditation.

I call it ongoing because on a Saturday afternoon we always run two classes.

We have the class for the beginners introduction to meditation for those who haven't meditated much before.

And that room next is on my right.

So anyone coming here for the first or second time,

The room on the right is the place to be.

The introduction to meditation class is on the right over there.

This is especially the place next door for those who have all their New Year's resolutions to do something about their mind state and stress state.

So the New Year's resolution club is next door.

This is for those again who have meditated before because I usually start with about a 15 minute introduction.

One aspect of meditation,

Many aspects of meditation we talk about every week and just try and talk about one aspect.

So little by little we put all those little facets of meditation together to become more skilled at training the mind.

So this is the ongoing class for meditation.

And we usually after the 15 minute introduction,

We usually meditate for about 45 minutes.

I sometimes lead the beginning part of that,

But afterwards I let people just meditate by themselves.

The reason why I start at the beginning is because one of the important factors of meditation is this mindfulness.

It is like a supervisor,

Like when you're driving a car,

You can't lose your attention because you just need to lose your attention for a minute or two and you crash the car.

In the same way,

When you're meditating,

If you really want to have success with meditation,

You have to sustain your attention on the task.

In other words,

You know what you're doing.

Unfortunately,

Because we haven't trained our mind all that well,

Whenever we close our eyes and we just go inside,

Very often we are being conditioned to daydream,

To think without really knowing what we're thinking about,

As if the mind just almost disappears.

And sometimes people can waste 15 minutes,

Half an hour,

Maybe even a whole 45 minutes sometimes,

With allowing the mind to drift all over the place.

And of course,

It's amazing,

Even doing that much,

You still have a little bit of peace,

Simply because you've closed your eyes and sat still.

You can go do much better than that,

Especially if one can focus the mind and keep a direction going at all times during the meditation process.

So if we have some sort of means of establishing the supervisor,

A person which is always looking over what you're doing,

And keeping that going for as long as possible,

You'll find the meditation has to go deeper,

Because you don't waste time,

You don't lose the plot of meditation.

So to establish the supervisor,

There are many,

Many tricks.

And one of the best tricks,

What we call in Buddhism,

Skillful means,

Is actually doing like a resolution.

So a resolution is actually setting up the mind,

Almost like brainwashing the mind,

It's conditioning the mind,

Setting it up for the task ahead.

And I did mention this particular type of resolution you can play with in this next 45 minutes,

Is actually giving yourself a gift,

Giving yourself the gift of peace.

And sometimes you wonder,

Why is it that I keep thinking about all these different things?

And a lot of times because you really think you have to,

That it's your job,

It's your responsibility,

And if I don't work all these problems out and think about them and sort it all out,

Then something is going to go wrong in my life or other people's lives.

But what you really need to do is to tell yourself,

You work very hard,

You come on a long journey,

You have many sort of successes and failures coming to this point in your life,

There's still many unfinished business.

But nevertheless,

Now you deserve 45 minutes of peace.

So you deliberately grant yourself 45 minutes where you don't have to do any work.

Don't give yourself that peace,

No one else will.

So you can say to yourself at the very beginning,

I give myself the gift of 45 minutes of peace during this meditation.

If you say something like that with sincerity,

With meaning,

Not playing around,

But with full attention and full sincerity,

You'll find that does have an effect on your mindfulness.

What it is,

Is it sets up the direction for the next period of time,

So that when you start thinking of the problem,

Sorting out some mistakes which happened earlier today,

Or planning what you're going to do this evening or tomorrow,

Something actually comes into the mind and says,

No,

No,

Look,

You've given yourself a moment of peace,

This is a holiday,

Stop it.

And that means you have a supervisor.

The supervisor is that part of the mind which sees you're going off track and pulls you back into line.

Instead of making an order,

Saying I have to be in the present moment,

Which you'll probably rebel against,

Instead of that you look upon this present moment,

This peace of being now,

As a great gift which you deserve and which you give out of love,

Out of kindness,

Out of care.

So you say to yourself,

I give myself the gift of peace.

As soon as you get peaceful,

And the present moment starts to kick in,

And explain before what we mean by present moment awareness,

When the past is gone and the future doesn't exist,

All that's left is called now,

The present moment.

And the present moment is no problem at all.

It's only when we think about the future or the past,

There is problems.

The present moment is that which is between the past and the future.

When you're not lingering and carrying around that which has just happened.

When you don't allow the last moment to infect the present moment.

And you just nurture in the present moment,

Understanding,

It's because you care for this present moment and nurture it and value it.

That's the best way to care for your future,

By looking after the present.

And you give yourself the opportunity,

The chance to be now.

By giving yourself that opportunity,

Giving yourself the gift of peace,

You're allowing yourself to be in the moment and you can stay there much more easily.

Having stayed in the present moment for about 10 minutes or so,

Depending on how strong you are in present moment awareness,

Making sure you don't go to the past or the future.

Then you can give yourself the second gift which is the gift of silence.

And the gift of silence is realizing you don't have to speak to yourself inside your mind.

This inner commentary,

This inner conversation,

You allow yourself to be still.

Giving yourself the gift of silence is something which no one else can give you.

You have to decide that you deserve that.

You have to realize you don't need to give everything a name.

It is not important that you work everything out.

Just like watching a cricket match or a tennis match on the television,

You don't need the commentary.

You don't need these words coming from these invisible people,

These know-it-alls coming through the speaker of your TV.

All you need is to see the action yourself.

You can know things without words.

You can appreciate things without a commentary.

I recall as a student,

Because I was a physicist,

Because I was always fascinated with astronomy,

I needed to learn the names of all the stars in the sky and understand exactly what type of star it was,

And what it meant,

How far away it was,

Whether it had a companion star with it,

Whether it was a galaxy or what it was.

And because I knew the names of all those stars,

Or many of them,

Or the constellations,

Whenever as a young monk in Thanda looked up at the sky and saw those stars,

I could never really appreciate them.

All I saw was a bunch of names.

It took me years to forget all of that.

So now I can look at the sky at night and just see beautiful stars.

You really need to know their names,

Or what they are,

In order to enjoy them and appreciate them.

It's important to learn how to look at something without giving it a name,

Experience without writing an essay about it in your head,

To be able to know in silence.

In this meditation you give yourself that opportunity.

You grant yourself the opportunity to be peaceful,

To be silent.

So you can know without giving anything a name.

Give yourself that gift.

It's a very beautiful present to be just silent inside.

You can't control the noise outside of you.

There's cars,

There's alarms go off,

People come in and out,

People cough,

The noise of the birds,

Or the noise of me.

But the noise between your ears,

That's fully in your control.

The noise in your head,

The inner conversation.

Shhhh.

Enjoy that peace,

Notice that peace,

And give yourself permission to be silent.

And in that peace and silence of present moment awareness,

Where there's no conversation going on,

The next stage is to give yourself the gift of focus,

Of oneness.

Instead of the mind being aware of so many different things in the moment,

Albeit silently,

You'll be aware of the sounds outside,

Or the feelings in the body,

Or whatever else is going on.

Instead you can focus on one sensation,

One feeling,

Which is the feeling of the breath going in and going out.

And by that we mean,

That which tells you the breath is going in,

That which tells you the breath is going out,

The sensation,

The feeling,

Whatever you wish to call it.

Not necessarily located anywhere in the body,

Wherever it happens to manifest,

That's what you watch.

So you can know the breath is going in,

Without understanding where it's going in,

Or where that feeling is located.

All you need to know,

The breath is happening.

And with that gift of oneness,

Gift of focus,

You find again the meditation goes to another level.

When you are sure the present moment,

The peace is so nice,

And the silence is so deep,

But the focus takes you to a higher level.

Where all the peaceful silent energies become put on one spot,

Focus like a magnifying glass,

Focusing the light.

It gives the mind power and energy and depth.

So when one starts to give oneself the gift of focus or oneness,

You say you don't need to be aware of all these other sounds.

I would often wonder why it was that these sounds always distract me.

Because they got nothing to do with me,

If somebody gets up and goes,

That's their business.

They bang the door,

That's the door's business,

Or the Buddhist Society of Western Australia's business,

Not yours.

Because the conversation outside has got nothing to do with you.

Why can't we close our ears in the same way we close our eyes?

You can if you really want to.

All you got to do is say that's none of my business,

I don't want to hear it.

And you won't hear it.

The only reason why sound is perceived by you is because you want to hear that.

It's important to you.

If you give yourself the gift of silence,

The gift of focus,

You get so deep onto the breath,

You can't hear any sounds.

Just the same way if you're reading a book,

You're really into that book,

You can't hear anybody.

You're watching the TV,

And it might be the last over of some sort of cricket match.

And your wife comes up to you and says,

The dinner's ready darling,

You can't hear her.

Even though the sound is getting into your ear,

It just doesn't get into your brain.

You're focused.

When you're focused,

Other things fade away.

So your mind becomes more simple,

Easier,

More depth,

More peace.

But give yourself the gift of oneness.

No one else can give that to you.

You just say,

I will be on the breath now.

I give myself that beautiful gift.

What you're really doing,

You're giving yourself the gifts,

Peace,

Silence,

Oneness,

The gift of inner happiness,

Contentment,

The deep peace of meditation.

So in order to establish that mindfulness,

So you don't go wandering off,

Give yourself gifts,

Valuable gifts,

Which you deserve,

Which you respect,

And because you find them worthy,

They become worthwhile.

You stay there and the meditation gets deeper.

So that's a little bit of another few tips there on how to meditate by giving yourself gifts.

Okay,

Any questions about that before we carry on with doing the 45 minute meditation?

Once again,

If anybody here hasn't done a 45 minute meditation before,

You'll probably find it a bit too much.

It's a long time to sit meditation and you'll start getting fidgety to disturb the people next to you,

Which is bad karma.

So if you can't see 45 minutes,

Please,

Room next door.

Otherwise,

We can now get ready to start the meditation.

If you want to stretch your legs or adjust your posture,

Please do so now because we can start the meditation in about 10 seconds time.

By the way,

My New Year's resolution this year,

I talked about it earlier,

My New Year's resolution and I want to keep my New Year's resolution.

If you can figure out how I can do that,

You're a better person than I am.

Okay now,

Close your eyes.

And as usual,

Please take a couple of minutes to allow awareness of your physical body to develop.

When you close your eyes,

You're not that aware because the brain has been consumed by the information of seeing.

And a lot of mind space has been taken up by that and now the mind space can revert to being aware of physical feelings.

I'll just start speaking so you can become more aware of feelings.

As you are aware of the body,

Adjust it.

Ask yourself,

Do I need to move?

Can I make my body more comfortable?

You can do so.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Once the body is comfortable,

Say to yourself,

I give myself the gift of peace.

I grant myself the opportunity to be free from the past,

To be liberated from the worries and concerns of the future.

I value the present moment.

I give myself the freedom to be now and remain there for as much of the meditation as I can.

Tell yourself,

I rather suggest yourself to be in the moment.

You deserve it.

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Just being in the moment,

No past,

No future.

The present worthwhile.

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Giving yourself the gift of silence,

There's no need to have a commentary.

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Giving oneself the gift of focus,

Of oneness on the breath.

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Close to the end of the meditation now.

Last few minutes is the time to reflect what meditation is like.

Seeing how far one has stopped.

The more one has stopped the more peace and power there is.

You feel that peace.

You know that freedom.

You enjoy the happiness.

Being the gong a few times now.

The end of the third chiming of the gong.

It will be time to come out of meditation.

How you doing?

There we go.

It's really wonderful to be able to develop the skill of meditation.

Go into those very very peaceful still states of mind inside.

And the ability in meditation is not something you are born with.

It's just you follow the instructions and have that skillful mind which can actually see what needs to be done.

Follow the instructions.

Just the mind becomes more and more still.

It's all about stillness.

Not moving.

Not moving the body,

Not moving the mind.

And the more still one gets,

The more one wakes up.

The more one wakes up,

The more one sees.

What one sees is just so peaceful,

So powerful,

So much joy.

So,

I must be meditating for almost 40 years now.

One of the best things I ever did was to learn how to lead the mind into stillness.

Don't stop.

That's all one really needs to do because everyone can do it.

It's just a matter of giving yourself the opportunity,

Making this whole path worthwhile.

Which is why every meditation I like to encourage you all just to feel what it's like.

So you value these stages.

When you value them,

When they're worth something,

You stay there.

When you can't stay there,

You're thinking backwards and forwards or you're restless,

You ask,

Why?

So use this beautiful wisdom power rather than willpower to investigate,

Find out the causes,

Understand the why of meditation.

You'll see that this is a bad habit,

That's all it is.

By coming to classes like this,

We're just making new habits.

The habits of just leaving life alone.

Future,

Past,

As soon as that disappears,

There's nothing to do anymore.

What you have now,

You're stuck with,

It's already arrived.

All the work is about trying to get rid of something or trying to gain something,

All about the future.

In the present moment,

There's no place to go.

In the present moment,

It means you start to slow down.

Once you start to stop the commentary,

You can see this present moment more clearly.

This commentary is not in the way.

You're not seeing the words about now.

The commentary,

The description,

The menu which describes the food,

You're actually here,

Experiencing now.

As soon as you start to focus,

Things start to slow down,

Stop and disappear.

Even your breath becomes very,

Very,

Very peaceful and smooth.

Not because you make it peaceful and smooth,

It's just nature because you don't need so much oxygen because you're not doing so much.

The brain,

The body is still.

So quite naturally,

The breath doesn't need to go in so fast.

That becomes very,

Very peaceful and still.

If you're very lucky,

If you do the job,

Everything just focuses on the breath,

The whole world disappears,

The breath becomes very still and smooth.

It's like getting this beautiful happiness,

This energy of meditation coming up.

It's great to have a hit of energy.

That's why unfortunately that kids take ecstasy or ice,

Crystal meth simply because it gives them a buzz.

It's very,

Very dangerous and expensive.

You don't need that.

Instead of going to North Bridge and hitting on some drugs,

You can come here on a Saturday afternoon and hit on meditation bliss.

Much more fun,

Much deeper,

Much safer and it's not illegal.

And you get much higher.

Sometimes I've told the stories of people looking at monks,

I think we're on some drug.

Now you know the drug we're on,

The drug of meditation,

The deep peaceful happiness of the mind.

They're there for you.

You miss it a few times,

Many times.

You keep persisting on this path and listen carefully to these instructions.

I know what I'm talking about.

You find out just how to make the mind just so still,

So powerful,

So beautiful.

The most beautiful thing in the world is a still mind.

Any comments or questions about that?

As you think I can't do it,

It's quite true you can't do it.

You are all completely incapable of developing deep meditation.

So am I.

You have to get out of the way in order to get these deep meditations.

As soon as there's an I in there,

I can do this,

I can't do this,

I will do this,

Whatever.

That's where you get the problem with the me or mine,

It just disappears.

That's one of the other teachings I was giving during the Rains retreats at Nodamara,

Sorry,

At the Serpentine.

I was repeating that in the retreats which I gave in Malaysia a couple of weeks ago.

It's a beautiful teaching from the Wisudimagga.

The path is but no traveller on it is seen.

So if you are travelling during the last 45 minutes,

The path of deep meditation would have disappeared.

If you were there doing something,

Controlling it or complaining about you can't do it or whatever,

As soon as there's an I there,

A traveller,

The path to deep bliss and freedom disappears.

But when you disappear,

Then the path becomes as wide as a six-lane highway.

You can't miss it.

So you don't do the meditation.

Meditation does you.

It does you in until you completely disappear,

You bliss out in the beautiful emptiness of freedom.

So it's easy to do,

Just disappear.

Close your eyes,

Close your ears,

And close off this silly me.

Just like these shoes,

We should leave a little sign outside.

Leave all your shoes outside,

Leave all your past outside,

Leave all your future outside,

Leave all your ego outside and also all your will.

Just shut up and enjoy the present moment.

It's much nicer when you're not here.

Okay,

Any comments or questions yet?

It's worked,

You're not here.

You're silent.

You disappeared,

You're vanished into nothingness.

Okay,

So when you really start doing this,

The whole process becomes this natural thing disappearing.

When it happens,

Please never,

Never,

Never,

Never,

Never get afraid.

Just because you're starting to get into some interesting states of meditation.

Sometimes fear comes up and first of all,

It's fear of the unknown.

When you haven't been to those places before,

You think,

Oh,

Oh,

This is a bit too much for me.

I know some people in Malaysia said,

Oh,

Oh,

If I keep going on this track any further,

I'm going to end up being a monk.

I don't want to be a monk yet.

I don't want to be a nun.

Say,

Ahh,

And those get up and go.

So don't worry,

Don't be afraid.

You won't become a monk or a nun,

If you do.

It's good fun being a monk or a nun.

But number two,

The other thing is that the things which are disappearing,

You don't feel so happy about losing so much which is so intensely personal,

Such as yourself,

Your history,

Who you think you are.

It's amazing when you,

The more you get into deep meditation,

The more you have to disappear,

The more you see what you're really attached to and who you think you are and how,

All the self which you make up.

It's great when you start getting old,

Because when you start getting old,

Your body which was really,

Really fit and healthy when you were young,

You can't control it anymore.

Just like when you were young,

When you're old,

You have to wear nappies again.

And that's very embarrassing for a few people.

Why?

Because you don't own this body.

That's fearful when you start to lose control of the body.

It's not yours anyway.

So let go of it now.

So when the body starts to disappear,

Let it go.

It's a big pain in the butt and the neck and in the nose and everywhere else.

That's why it's called a body.

And when it starts disappearing,

When other things disappear,

When time disappears,

What a wonderful thing that is.

When future doesn't exist anymore.

When the past is completely vanished.

And it's wonderful to be free of all that.

So you really hear in this moment,

Imagine the freedom when in your consciousness for 45 minutes,

The past is not there.

The future just doesn't exist.

Seeing for the illusions it is.

What you have is this beautiful moment.

It's nothing to do,

Nowhere to go.

Full rest.

People go to Bali,

They go to Phuket to get away from it all.

And you don't need to go to Byron Bay to get away from it all.

Just come to Nollamara on a Saturday afternoon and you get away from it all.

Far from the maddening crowd of all your memories.

Far from the hell of thinking about what you have to do in the future.

What am I going to do?

How am I going to do this?

What should I choose?

All that disappears.

When it does disappear,

Many people are afraid at first.

I noticed a strange phenomena when we first moved to our monastery down at Serpentine.

It was quite down there,

Especially in the afternoon.

A few times I saw visitors walking in.

As soon as they walked in the gate,

They started shouting instead of talking.

Their voice got stronger.

I couldn't understand why does a person have to talk so loudly in a quiet place.

The reason is because they wanted to destroy the silence.

They were afraid of it.

The peace of the bush was so challenging to them.

They had to speak louder to try and abolish this very threatening silence.

Because sometimes silence does threaten you.

It's a beautiful thing.

All it's threatening is this big obstacle and barrier to inner happiness and peace.

When the fear comes up,

Great,

You're getting somewhere.

But don't stop.

Just face that fear.

Like I always used to say,

Whenever you're chased by a ghost in life,

And the ghost is chasing you,

Just turn around and look at that ghost in the eye and go,

Eww,

Boo.

And then the ghost will run away.

Because the ghosts are more afraid of you than you are of them.

And you're not dealing with any of these beautiful things which happen.

If you get afraid,

Stand your ground and stare it down.

And you'll find on the other side of fear,

This beautiful peace and freedom.

You're just making progress,

That's all.

You're going to deeper places you haven't been to before.

Things which you thought were so important,

Have been taken away from you.

And when they're taken away,

Ahh,

What a relief.

I don't have to worry about this after all.

Ahh,

What freedom.

I can walk out of my prison cell.

Ahh,

What joy.

I don't have to strive anymore.

Ahh,

What peace.

I'm no longer here to disturb myself.

So that's what happens in meditation.

So fear comes along,

Well done,

You're getting close.

Carry on.

Okay,

Can I get any more questions out of you?

Or even one?

No?

Okay,

Let's go home then.

Okay,

We'll pay you a space to put down the sangha and then we can all go home.

I know all those of you have got questions but were too scared to ask in public,

Can now ask me personally.

Just a quick announcement.

Next Wednesday,

9pm on SBS,

On the show Decadence.

Turn it on and you'll be surprised.

Have a guess who's starring in Decadence.

It's the sort of program I deserve to be on.

Next Wednesday,

The 10th on SBS,

9pm.

Reviews

Some days my mind is busy. Some days so calm and peaceful. Always a joy to sit. Thank you. ☮️💖🙏🕉️