Day 069/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm
by Ilan
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
Hello and welcome once again to the Buddhist Society's Saturday afternoon meditation class.
The ongoing class for those who have meditated before.
As usual have to make the announcement for anyone here who is just coming for the first time,
Usually encouraged to go to the beginners class in the room on your left as you walk in here from the reception area,
This is a class where we usually sit for about 40-45 minutes.
And how this class is as usual I usually focus on one particular aspect of meditation and one of the aspects which comes to my mind was a way of talking about meditation which I did on a TV in Sri Lanka last week and that was using the simile of the thousand petal lotus.
This particular simile is one of my favourite ones,
Works on the understanding that when the sun shines on a lotus the outermost petals warm up and they open up to reveal the next layer of petals so that they can receive the warmth of the sun so they open up to allow the next layer of petals to receive the warmth of the sun and layer by layer by layer you go deeper inside that lotus.
And the reason that simile is helpful for the meditator,
It does describe the stages of meditation as being within each other and that means that the whole process of meditation is not rejecting what you have or trying to get rid of it but being deeper with what you have to go inside of it where you were to reach that next level.
So you never go on to the next levels of meditation,
You always go in to the next levels and that's not just being clever with words,
What's the difference between going on and going in.
Going on means that you leave where you are now to get to some other stage.
In meditation you never leave where you are,
You never sort of reject it,
Abandon it and move somewhere else because that type of movement is what causes restlessness,
What causes the lack of the mind becoming peaceful.
So instead of rejecting anything or going anywhere else,
You sit absolutely still in your body and in your mind and allow the whole process of meditation to move inwards.
And for many times this is a very natural process,
As you focus on anything,
The part which is very interesting usually dominates the field of vision and everything else disappears.
As the old simile of the TV set which I mentioned last night,
Was it last night?
I'm missing somewhere recently anyway,
As you watch a TV set the edges disappear and the reason is because what you focus on fills the mind,
You go into the centre of that image.
When you first look at any piece of scenery with your eyes,
You see the whole vast range but then you usually focus on something within that range,
A person or an object you really want to look at and that actually expands in the mind and takes up most of the space,
Pushing the edges of that vision,
Of that screen,
Of that stretch of light or whatever,
It pushes the edges away and they disappear.
It's nature for whatever the mind looks at,
It focuses on something and what's on the edges just disappears.
And that's precisely what happens in meditation quite naturally,
That you focus and you go in,
Deeper and deeper and deeper into the centre of things.
Literally,
Literally centring of the mind and it's a natural process,
You don't need to do this.
Once you start your meditation,
Very often we're just starting with our body and our mind,
Our experience,
Our life and we're just going into it.
So when you close your eyes,
You find yourself going into space,
Into this body because you can't hear or feel anything outside of your body when you close your eyes and start meditating.
All you feel is this physical body here,
You're going in.
It's the first stage of going inwards into this world,
Into your body.
As you're watching your body,
Calming it down,
Making sure it's comfortable,
The next stage of going in is going into the centre of time.
This huge range of experiences available to your consciousness,
From the earliest time you can remember to all the projections about the future.
All of that you just go to the centre,
This thing we call now,
The present moment.
It's centring in time.
First of all this thing called the present moment is a very powerful stage of meditation.
When you go into the centre of the present moment,
That's where you find this beautiful silence.
Often look at this silence as an idea of waiting in this moment.
When you're waiting for something,
It means you're not moving,
You're just still waiting for something to happen or waiting for somebody to come or waiting for the bus to move.
And that idea of waiting in the moment is very helpful to understand how we are still.
So we wait in this moment,
Actually still in this present moment.
When you can actually start doing that,
You get like silence.
Silence is right in the centre of the present moment.
So you don't abandon the present moment to go into another stage.
You just go deeper into the present moment to get the silence.
As many meditators have also found,
They don't need to sort of abandon even silence to get onto the breath.
For many meditators it's a strange thing if you go deeper into that silence,
Just stay in that silence and make it fuller,
Deeper,
More long lasting.
From the centre of that silence you can start to feel the breath.
The reason is that because in that silence you've got many many feelings or experiences you could be aware of.
Instead of having that whole range of experiences,
The mind will centre on one of them.
And what it centres on usually is the breath,
Simply because some of you have been doing the breath for a long time now.
And so you just go deeper into the present moment,
Deeper into the centre of the present moment where you find the silence and deeper into the silence where you start experiencing your breath.
When it comes that way,
As if going deeper into wherever you are,
Of course you never abandon the silence,
You never abandon the present moment,
You just go deeper into it,
Like a small piece of territory within this larger piece of territory.
And as you go into that breath,
If that breath happens from the present moment and from silence,
It is a very very peaceful breath and a very comfortable breath in the very beginning.
For the one reason that when you don't have any access to the future and the past,
There's very little to compare things with,
It's just breath and it's just nice and it's silent and there's no thought going on,
It's peaceful.
And that breath in the centre of the silence becomes very very nice.
And once you get into that habit of mind always going to the centre of things,
Again you never think,
What level am I on now,
What should I do next,
Because the idea of what should I do next becomes a silly question,
It just doesn't apply,
You're just going into the centre of the breath even.
Always going to the centre of things,
Being more fully where you are,
Deepening the experience of now,
Solidifying it,
Just allowing it to stay until it becomes very very solid,
Stable with you and then you go deeper into it.
And that's why the breath,
As you fully go into it,
The breath takes over your whole mind.
So every moment of the mind is just filled with the breath.
So the idea of going in,
Out,
In,
Out,
In,
Out,
In,
Out doesn't make sense anymore,
It's just breath happening in every second,
Every moment.
That's an interesting part of the breath meditation,
Because at that point you cannot know whether it's an in-breath or an out-breath,
Beginning or end,
It's just breath happening,
That's all.
So you go so deep into the breath,
That these external descriptions,
Like in or out,
Beginning or end,
They sort of disappear,
Just like the edges of the TV screen when you start watching a movie.
So you're watching a movie,
You know it's on TV but you can't see the edges of the screen.
You know it's the breath but you can't see those edges called in and out or beginning,
Middle and end,
You just know it's breath.
And once you get in again to that idea of just going inwards,
After a while you just go into the centre of that breath and you get the beautiful breath,
It just becomes beautiful.
And it's all the time,
You're just staying where you are,
Because when you're staying where you are,
The mindfulness is like hitting the lotus that is your body and mind and just opening petals,
Layer by layer by layer.
And as the petals open up layer by layer by layer,
You go into the deepest stages.
Next stage is always right inside the one you're in now,
So you don't look for it outside,
To the left,
To the right or anywhere else,
You just keep your gaze,
Your mindfulness,
Just on this thing now.
And what that means is,
In that metaphor,
The thousand petal lotus,
That mindfulness is like the sun,
It doesn't move,
It just stays where you are right now.
So the mindfulness warms whatever you're experiencing right now and it doesn't try and get rid of it,
Doesn't try and move anywhere else,
The mindfulness stays where it is.
It just warms the experience until it opens up into a deeper level of meditation.
This beautiful breath.
This beautiful breath is in the centre of the full awareness of the breath,
Which is in the centre of the breath,
Which is in the centre of silence,
Which is in the centre of the present moment,
Which is in the centre of time,
Which is in the centre of your body,
Which is in the centre of your life.
So it's always going into the the centre of things.
Once you are in the beautiful breath,
What should I do next?
Stay there,
Don't do anything,
Go deeper into it.
And imitators arise,
And usually the perception of an imitator arises,
Literally it usually arises in the very centre of your mind,
Just a beautiful light just comes up right into you.
You see this beautiful light.
What you do next is keep shining your mindfulness on that light,
Don't move,
Don't go anywhere.
If that light doesn't stay long enough,
Just the breath will come up,
Just as if the light comes from the centre,
The breath is pushed on the edge outside.
If the mind isn't ready for that,
Just the lotus petals will close up,
The breath will actually from the outside come and squash the nimitta in the centre,
And the nimitta gets so small it will just disappear and the breath will be in your mind.
It's always like centring.
As you go into that nimitta you just allow yourself to go into the centre of that nimitta,
You're in the jhanas.
The second jhana is in the middle of the first jhana,
The third is in the middle of the second.
All the way in,
Just going centring,
Centring,
Centring,
Centring,
Centring.
So very beautiful metaphor for what meditation is.
You find that the only time when that meditation fails is when you're not going into the centre of things anymore,
You're going to the left or the right.
You're doing something else,
Going somewhere else,
Not being where you are.
Mindfulness is just planning something next or lingering on what's just happened or going in a tangential direction into some sort of fantasy or dream.
As long as you're where you are now,
Focusing on this and going deeper into it,
There you'll find the path of meditation.
Like the thousand petal lotus going in,
In and in and in and in,
Never on,
On,
On.
That's a very beautiful description on the path of meditation.
You remember that,
Meditation gets very,
Very,
Very easy.
Okay,
So that's a little description on the essence of meditation.
Is there any questions about that?
Okay,
Let's give it a go.
So you'd like to get yourself comfortable first of all.
And once you get comfortable sitting in a meditation posture,
Then we can be in the meditation.
Very close the eyes.
With the eyes closed we become more aware of our body.
So we're going into the centre of our world.
Centre of our universe has to be our body.
So we feel our body,
We're kind to it.
If there's anything we need to change,
We do change that.
Adjusting our hands,
Adjusting our legs,
Our feet,
Our back.
Spending time with our body,
Quality awareness time.
And when the body feels peaceful,
We can go deep inside.
Deep inside,
Not so much our body now,
But the centre of time.
Can you imagine time like a highway stretching out to your left into the distant past.
The further back you look,
The harder it is to see.
On the other direction that highway stretches way off into the future,
Into these misty mountains of tomorrow and next week and next year.
Further along that you can't hardly see what's going to happen next,
Where that road is going to lead of your future.
With this whole stretch of highway,
From the distant past to the uncertain future,
We centre.
Centre in that part of the highway where we are standing right now.
What we call now.
Going right in the centre of time.
That's the whole movement of the mind,
This whole inclination to go to the centre of this.
Your mindfulness,
Your awareness like the sun shining on your life.
Seeing the outermost petals of past and future open up.
Right in the centre lies a layer of petals called now.
Right in the centre of time.
Right in the centre of time.
Right in the centre of time.
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Right in the centre of time.
Right in the centre of time.
Right in the centre of time.
Right into the present moment to find the silence.
So on,
Always going in.
Right into the present moment.
Right into the present moment.
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Right into the present moment.
So coming close to the end of the meditation now.
It's time to understand from your own reflection on this moment how you feel.
Exactly how the meditation has gone.
Did you manage to stop the mind going on and on and on?
And instead start the mind on the inner journey going in,
In,
In.
What does it feel like?
At the end of a meditation.
Why?
I want to have the gong three times.
The end of the third ringing of the gong is a time to come out from your meditation.
The.
The.
The.
Here we go,
A nice forty five minute meditation.
It helps to understand that the goal of meditation is stillness.
Stillness sometimes is a word in meditation we call samadhi.
And there's been many translations of that word over the years.
Sometimes people call it concentration.
But I prefer to use the word stillness because that gives the meaning of the word in a more accurate,
Easy to understand form.
And it also shows you the way you gain that stillness.
Every time the mind moves you're destroying that stillness.
So if you can think stillness,
Keep that in your mind as the goal just to be still.
Then you have a good understanding of the path and also the result of meditation.
It also makes it quite clear why the instructions I gave today are going in,
In,
In rather than on,
On,
On.
You see how stillness grows.
It is a stillness of the sun being still shining on this one lotus and maintain its warmth in that lotus.
That opens up the lotus.
So the sun moves around,
Now chooses this lotus,
Now chooses that lotus.
You'll find that the lotus is just close up again.
It doesn't have that sustained focus.
But if you can keep the attention just on the,
On the path of going in,
Then you'll find that you'll come to those stages.
Those stages are just not sort of rungs on the ladder.
They're just more like signposts on the side of the road,
Like landmarks.
So you know how far you've gone down the road into stillness.
And being landmarks as such,
You don't sort of aim for the landmarks.
What you do is just go more and more still,
More and more inwards,
More centering until those landmarks become quite clear to you.
The landmark of silence,
The landmark of,
So the landmark of the present moment,
The landmark of silence,
The landmark of the breath,
The landmark of the beautiful breath,
One of the great landmarks of meditation.
You've got enough stillness that the mind is becoming bright.
When that mind becomes bright,
It becomes happy.
Now you understand a little bit about what mindfulness is because that stillness generates the mindfulness,
Empowers it and brings the happiness of meditation.
When these three things come together,
The stillness,
The clarity and the happiness,
Then you're really getting off in your meditation.
Just go even more still,
More centered until you really go into the middle of the mind,
Into the nimittas and the jhanas.
These are things which you can do.
All one needs to remember is always going into the central,
Whatever you're experiencing now.
Never trying to get rid of it,
Never rejecting it,
Embracing it,
Being kind to it,
Making peace with it,
Being gentle.
All these words which create the stillness,
Whenever there's a rejection of anything,
This is good enough,
They'll always give you something to do.
Every bit of fault finding and fault finding and seeing what's wrong with something,
It always generates just more business in the mind.
But every moment of contentment,
Every moment of gratitude,
Every moment of kindness,
Of compassion,
You'll find is a moment where work finishes.
Strange thing about people who try to get rid of the work in their life,
You all know from whether it's your office or whether you're home,
There's no end of work,
There's always one thing done,
Another thing needs to be done.
Projects always keep going on,
On,
On,
On,
On,
On,
On,
On,
On.
You can't stop business very easy by going into the center of things instead of seeing the faults in things,
Being grateful for how far you've come.
Being at peace with this moment now,
To be at peace with it you have to see,
Just it's worth being at peace,
You've done enough,
This is good enough.
And understanding that you give up this movement into a better state,
Give up this fault finding which drives you always somewhere else,
You stay where you are,
The contentment,
The letting go,
The being at peace,
Making peace with things,
Embracing things is a way of residing in this moment,
Residing in the stillness,
Residing in the breath,
Going deeper and deeper in.
The last part of that simile of the lotus is the innermost petals of the lotus are always the most fragrant and beautiful.
The outermost ones are the rough and coarse ones because they have to withstand the wind all day.
The ones inside are sheltered,
The ones inside are more fragrant,
The ones inside are more delicate and beautiful.
This is exactly what the mind is like.
The deeper you go into the mind in these landmarks of meditation,
The more delicate,
The more beautiful,
The more fragrant they are.
Beautiful breath becomes very delicate.
When you get to nimitta stage,
That's gossamer thing,
You can't hold it without destroying it,
You just have to let it be with no holding.
Is that delicate?
Just like the innermost petals of the flower,
It is so beautiful,
So fragrant,
Just like the inner petals of a flower.
Okay,
So any questions about the meditation today?
Going in,
In,
In,
In,
In.
For those of you who know some Buddhism,
You know the opposite of that is going outwards.
This is a word in Buddhism called the asavas,
The outflowings of the mind.
And that's the equivalent of the old Four Noble Truths.
Sometimes the Buddha,
Instead of saying the Four Noble Truths,
He says the asavas instead of suffering.
So when the mind goes out,
Flows out.
No one finds suffering,
Lack of contentment.
When it flows inwards,
Goes against the stream,
It goes into the moment,
Into the centre of things.
That's where you find going the opposite direction.
It's a time where you find peace,
Freedom and liberation of the mind.
In the centre of this moment right now lies the Buddha and Nibbana.
So it's just like unwrapping one of these presents.
Sometimes you get this presents,
Sometimes even as monks you get this presents,
You get this presents and they're wrapped in so many wrappings,
Especially if these books come in from overseas.
My goodness,
You could sort of unwrap the outer packing and then you sort of get some inner packing and then you get the cardboard box,
You unwrap that and there's some other packing and my goodness,
How many packagings there are just for one or two books.
And that's just like the dhamma is right in the centre of all this packaging.
A package with this body,
Package with time,
Package with thinking,
Package with the breath.
Go inside,
Unwrap this moment and when you unwrap it,
There you find the dhamma right in the centre.
So it's like unwrapping this moment,
Seeing what's in the centre.
So that's enough,
There's no questions,
I will now unwrap you and you could all go back and have a cup of tea.
5.0 (24)
Recent Reviews
Pavel
September 19, 2021
Best So far , Thank you Ajahn 🙏
Katie
April 5, 2021
Sinking deeper and letting all the thoughts go. The time seems to fly by. Again, many thanks for sharing these practices. ☮️💖🙏🕉️