Day 113/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

This track includes several tools to help strengthen your meditation practice. About 15 minutes; Dharma talk/meditation advice and inspiration; about 15 minutes of guided meditation; about 30 minutes of silent meditation practice; and a Q&A session/closing thoughts after the meditation practice.

Transcript

Okay,

I think that's close enough now,

We can actually start the talk for meditation.

And one of the things I was going to talk about just for the first 15 minutes was somebody referred me to an article which was recently published by the BBC.

And because mindfulness and meditation is becoming more popular these days,

They were mentioning that they saw that some people who were doing meditation,

Or rather the mindfulness type meditation,

Were experiencing some negative states like anxiety as a result of their meditation.

And I think what they were referring to is sometimes the way that it was taught to some people it was getting them to let go of their defences and many of those past memories and sometimes very unpleasant memories from the past would come up to disturb them.

And they had a lot of fear and anxiety about what happened during their meditation.

So I wanted to mention that today.

What do we do when people just are meditating and some past memories come up and it creates some fear inside of you?

And of course there are many,

Many remedies to that.

And the way I was taught meditation by someone like Anacarya Chakra gave great support if you're meditating and some old memory from the past came up.

What to do about it?

And of course the first thing is that if something is coming up now and hasn't come up for weeks,

For months,

For years,

First of all,

Why is that?

And I think you could all understand it is because some of the memories from the past can be quite negative to the point that we don't really know how to deal with them.

So they're pushed down,

They're suppressed,

They're put under a rock,

They don't just disappear but they get stronger and stronger.

It's almost like festering the more they're kept in the dark.

So one of the first things is always to allow those memories if you feel confident and safe enough to come up.

And when they do come up,

To make sure you're in a safe place so you're not just coming home from work or you're not just overwhelmed with so many other difficulties or problems in your life and you're with people who understand how this mind works and how to deal with this.

Because when it comes up in your mind,

If you can let it come up,

And don't treat it with fear,

Treat it with even some kindness.

And there are many,

Many wonderful little ways of changing your perception of that anxiety or that fear which is generated from some past memory a long time ago.

And one of those beautiful techniques,

Which I even said very briefly last night,

Was the simile of the hand.

And the simile of the hand goes like this,

How big is my hand?

You've all seen this before,

I hope.

My hand is now so big,

I can't see any of you.

The only thing I can see in the whole world is my hand.

So is it the fault my hand is too big?

Of course not.

The fault is I'm holding my hand far too close to myself.

If I put my hand where it belongs,

Which is at the end of my arm,

Yes,

I can still see my hand,

But I can also see all of you as well.

And my hand is not totally obsessing and dominating my perception.

You're giving it perspective.

That's an important thing to do whenever there's some negative thing comes up in your mind when you're meditating.

To find a perspective where you're not denying the existence of that phenomena,

That memory,

But you're not giving it a meaning which it doesn't deserve.

Number one,

It's in the past,

It's gone.

It's not harming you now.

Now you are safe.

The wonderful thing about the past is all it can do is you remember it.

It's like a ghost.

And believe it or not,

When I was at university,

That was one of my hobbies.

I know that people in Asia think I'm crazy because as a hobby I used to go with my friends,

Going to haunted houses,

Trying to find ghosts,

Cameras and all sorts of stuff.

And that's one thing we knew that the only thing which a ghost can ever do to you is make you scared,

It can't physically harm you.

It's the same with those ghosts of the past we call our memories.

They can't physically harm you.

They can only make you anxious,

Scared,

Worried,

And that is the thing which we look at.

And that is we think,

Well,

It's only a memory,

It can't hurt me now.

Put it in perspective and you will find that the trauma,

The anxiety from the past gets considerably less.

The more you bring a coach to yourself,

Obviously it feels much bigger.

The more you hide it,

The more sort of afraid you are,

The more you give it power.

It's one of the little sayings which I used to say when I was even a young monk.

You don't run away from ghosts or memories of the past.

You can,

You learn to turn around and you trace the ghosts.

That's actually how it works.

It's not just because I'm a monk,

But I remember in the early days in Thailand seeing a few ghosts,

Because we were living in this monastery,

Wat Na Na Chaht,

And there was a local cremation ground.

And then,

They were just interested in them.

What do they do?

Where do they live during the daytime?

Because you only see them at night time mostly.

Do they go and have a rest during that?

But anyway,

I was interested,

So when I went to go and try and talk to them,

They ran away from me.

And the words I can remember them saying,

Ah,

You can see us!

They were terrified of me.

And that's true,

That's what happens.

We always think that we're terrified of them.

Turn around and face it and they run away from you.

Don't have any anxiety in the past,

Any fear of the past,

Any negative experience of the past.

Face it,

If you feel safety to do so.

And also,

Just have this wonderful attitude of non-judgmental.

Good people do bad things because they're in bad situations sometimes.

Sometimes it's so hard to judge a person what they do and why they do it.

Of course,

It's not excuse for bad behavior,

But the bad behavior happened.

Why they did that,

Sometimes you can never understand.

But it doesn't mean they're a bad person.

They're a good person doing bad things.

And little ideas like that,

Philosophies like that,

Ways of perceiving like that,

Take away this fear and this harm.

It can happen once,

It's very unlikely to happen again.

So you don't need to feel sort of in danger when these experiences come up.

The second thing,

Because it is a memory,

You have full control over it,

Which is a lovely thing to understand.

If that memory is too much for you,

You can just say,

No,

Not now,

It's not the right time.

You can push it away and you deal with it another time when you're stronger.

Or you can change that memory and mess around with it.

So one of the memories which,

Not really a memory,

But one of these very fearful experiences which I had in my meditation years ago,

They were sitting very quietly and then the mind was getting very peaceful.

And then it was like I had my eyes closed.

And then the vision in my mind came up and it was a monster right in front of me.

It had its tongue out,

Eeeehhhhh.

And I could see its teeth were all sharpened like vampire teeth,

Dripping red stuff which I assumed was blood.

And its eyes were bulging like they were going to fall out of their sockets.

And when I was out of spiky hair,

This was before the time of the punks,

The monsters,

They invented the spiky hair,

Not the punks.

The spiky hair,

It had skulls around its neck,

It looked really,

Eeeehhhhh.

But the one thing which I knew,

Because I've been trained,

And which I'm telling you now,

That you're in total control.

So being young,

And I think those of you who've been here long enough know that I'm a bit playful,

I decided to,

And its eyes were just really scared,

Scary.

So I put some sunglasses over its eyes.

So it looked actually quite cool with those sunglasses on.

And its mouth,

You can see all the black under teeth,

All the pointed teeth.

I just decided,

Just willed,

And then blacked some of his teeth out,

Like I used to do as a naughty boy at school,

I was just backing out the teeth of like King Henry VIII or something during the history classes.

And then,

What else did I do?

I put a cigarette out of his mouth,

Over his spiky hair,

I put a sun hat with a flower coming out.

Until after one or two minutes,

I totally humiliated that monster,

Which I knew I created.

I laughed,

And my monster never came back again.

So that's just an idea of how,

When we have our memories,

We can add,

We can subtract to those memories,

As we do all the time.

But you can add something interesting to those memories,

Making them fun,

Because that's another little truth,

Which I discovered a long time ago,

Especially giving public talks.

Being in public talks is supposed to be the scariest thing you can ever do.

But the antidote to that is having fun.

And as you know,

I enjoy my public talks.

I tell jokes,

Funny stories,

Laugh.

And sometimes it's very difficult giving talks when people have masks on,

Because I can't see whether you're laughing,

Smiling,

Or groaning underneath your masks.

No,

I can't,

No.

Anyway.

But nevertheless,

I realized that if you have fun,

You get some joy,

You can't have fear.

The two can't exist in the human mind at the same time.

In fact,

One of the greatest antidotes of fear is joy and happiness,

Even to the point that when I was a school teacher,

I was a school teacher for one year,

And when I had to set an exam for the kids in maths.

And I know that some kids at school,

About 13 or 14 year olds,

Some of them just hate maths,

They can't do maths,

They don't like maths.

And they all had to do the exam in maths which I set for them.

And because I set about 100 kids,

Maybe 60 kids,

Maybe,

In the four or five classes,

Yeah,

Boy,

It was 100 kids,

They were all sitting in the hall.

You know,

Remember exams when you're.

.

.

I don't know if they've changed at all.

Everyone sits in their own desk and they have the exam paper upside down on their desk.

And I'm sort of sitting on the top,

Not really,

But on the stage with a clock.

And I tell everyone to sit down and be quiet.

And in one or two minutes,

Or two minutes,

The test will start.

You know,

No talking.

And the test will last for an hour,

Hour and a half.

Are you ready?

Okay,

Turn your papers over.

The test starts now.

And these are the kids which I'd known for the whole year.

And those kids,

You see them,

They were just so tight and tense,

They were only doing an exam.

It was only.

.

.

It wasn't an important exam,

Nothing which was really that decisive for their later careers,

But nevertheless,

They were scared.

And then,

One by one,

They were reading the exam and they got these questions on maths.

And then they stopped.

They looked at the question,

They looked up at me,

And I had this big smile on my face,

And one of those questions,

I put a joke in there.

And they'd never seen a joke in the end-of-year maths exam before.

I think it started off.

.

.

The one part I remember was like two teachers,

Sit still and be quiet,

Were doing some trigonometry sort of question.

And for those kids,

Just seeing that,

They looked up,

They laughed,

They broke their tension so they could actually enjoy as much as they can in exam,

And did very well.

So even telling jokes in exams,

That's Ajahn Brahm.

So,

The same with when you're meditating.

Have that little bit of fun,

Do things slightly differently,

And all the anxiety disappears.

Little things.

If you can't watch your breath,

Then as I said on the last retreat,

Do breath a different way.

And it's what I call backwards breath meditation.

Have I taught you backwards breath meditation here before?

Okay,

It's very simple to do.

You've been on retreats before,

So you've known it before.

But how to do backwards breath meditation?

Now,

To show you what ordinary breath meditation is,

For those of you who haven't closed your eyes,

Just close your eyes now,

Breathe in and out three times,

And at the end of the third breath,

Open your eyes.

Okay,

Go.

In,

Out three times,

Then open your eyes.

Okay,

Now I'm pretty sure that most of you would have started with an in breath and then out.

In,

Out,

In,

Out,

Because that's how most people do these things.

So backwards breath meditation is this.

When I say go,

I want you to breathe out first and then in.

Out,

In.

Out,

In.

Out,

In.

Okay,

Ready,

Steady,

Go.

And for want of a better name,

I call that backwards breath meditation.

And amazingly,

It feels different.

You breathe out first and then in.

A little bit of playfulness like that makes things interesting,

But it also takes away the anxiety and the fear,

Which means that those bad memories of the past,

They hardly ever come up at all.

And quite frankly,

They don't all need to be dealt with.

Sometimes,

This is Buddhist psychology,

You can let go of all of them in one hit.

Like you're a,

What do you call it?

Like you're rowing a boat down the river and you look behind you and tied to your boat is this barge.

And there's another barge tied behind that and another barge tied behind that.

And each one of those barges is all your memories of the past and oh,

They're so heavy,

Surprising,

You're actually making any progress in life,

You're rowing all that heavy weight behind you.

What should you do?

Should you go to those barges and have a look which is important,

Which is not important?

You can do that if you want to,

But that's endless.

To me,

You just untie the string which connects the boat where you're rowing to the first barge and all the other barges you're disentangled from.

You just row nice and peacefully down this one river.

So,

That degree of letting go,

Number one is possible.

And it's also a wonderful thing to be able to do.

That's not you,

It's a person a long time ago.

Sometimes you look at a photograph of the person who experienced that trauma and you look at them now,

You now,

Is that the same person?

To try and disassociate that way,

Different time,

Different people,

That time is gone.

That can also help just overcome those anxieties.

And little by little,

With kindness and wisdom,

You find that those anxieties,

They never bother you again.

Isn't that nice?

And that is why we do meditation to transcend these things.

So they all vanish and go away.

So we can live more in the present moment.

And if we do want to remember the past,

You can keep a few little barges behind you,

But in those barges you keep all the nice stuff,

All your good memories,

All the wonderful things which happen to you.

Just like the photos in your house.

Or beautiful photographs.

I often say this,

Life is strange.

In your house,

Whenever I go visit people's houses,

I see these lovely photographs of you,

You always see in their marriages,

You see photographs of you on holiday somewhere,

Photographs of you,

You know,

Your graduation,

Throwing up your hat,

And all those happy photographs I see in people's houses,

I never ever ever see the photograph of them stuck in the traffic on the way to work.

Never see photographs of them being sick.

Never see the photographs of all the difficulties in relationships,

Only the marriage.

Yay!

In our house we only have happy photographs.

But in here,

Do you keep the happy photographs in there?

Or do you have a lot of negative photographs in there?

For goodness sake!

You do have a delete button.

So you find the delete button in meditation,

Delete,

Delete,

Delete,

Delete,

Delete,

Delete.

And you can't get the negative memories back again.

You keep the positive ones and have a happy time.

Okay,

That's only 20 minutes,

So I can't go on for too long on this,

But nevertheless,

Now is the time for actually doing the meditation.

And a bit of kindness and softness,

And you find out this really helps.

You don't need to have anxiety in meditation.

I don't know how people teach in those places,

But it's not how we teach here.

So really safe.

So just sitting down,

Closing your eyes.

Yeah,

I'll put my mask on.

Out of sympathy for all of you.

Can you hear okay with the mask on?

Can you hear okay with the mask on?

No,

Okay,

I'll take it off.

Use the excuse.

So closing your eyes.

Close your eyes,

Close.

Remember this is a gift for you.

It's not a time to achieve things or get rid of things.

It's like relaxation time.

Beautiful sound of the wind.

The sound of the wind like that reminds me of being in mountains.

I meditate a lot.

Beautiful places.

The wind was noisy but it was natural,

I could not control it,

So I had to just let it be.

There's something about nature,

Winds,

Or the sound of rain,

The sound of a river,

Which actually tranquilized.

The reason was because I could do nothing about it,

I just had to be aware.

It was like a type of music.

I could listen to it,

Enjoy it,

And allow it to make me peaceful.

But then as usual I start with my body,

Making sure it's comfortable.

And it's not just for a second or two,

I take minutes on my body.

And I start with my feet.

So yeah,

Okay,

Start the feet but also the legs.

And it's not just being aware.

My happiness is great but it's never enough.

There's also the wisdom and the kindness,

Which I also add to my awareness.

As you know,

You do this so often,

So much,

You give it a name,

It's called kindfulness.

Not mindfulness but kindfulness,

Which is a combination of mindfulness and kindness.

And it's not just a word,

It's how I look at my legs when I start meditating.

A lot of kindness.

How are you legs?

And if I find any part of those legs which is tight,

Which is tense,

I relax them,

Don't hesitate.

If something is itchy,

Just a bit of my nose,

I'd scratch it.

The first few minutes of meditation,

If you've got a kid and you've got to settle them down in bed at night,

So they can go to sleep,

You don't tell the kid,

Go to sleep or else you're in big trouble.

Of course,

They'll wind the kid up and they'll never go to sleep.

You're kind to them,

Stroke their hair,

Just,

Mummy is here,

Daddy is here,

It's all right.

I tell them a little story like I tell you stories.

And so do you go,

Nice and peaceful.

That's what I do to my legs.

Make sure they're all really comfortable.

And if any part of them is tight,

I have the kindness and wisdom to relax them.

It's like the tightness is things either pulled apart or squashed too much.

And if they're pulled apart,

I imagine there's two ends or whatever's being stretched,

There's two ends,

Letting go.

So the muscle,

The tendon or whatever it is in my body,

Just comes to a state of ease.

If anything is squashed,

I imagine it expanding,

Just imagine it getting bigger and bigger.

So the tightness,

The pain,

If it's that bad,

It gets diluted.

The larger it gets,

The less intense.

And I stay with kindfulness on my legs.

Knowing from past experience this is wisdom.

It's when I can let them be and move up to the next part of my body.

And my wisdom of many years' experience of meditation knows it's important to stay that few extra seconds to really make sure my legs do not need to be adjusted at all afterwards.

And then from the legs to the butt.

I sit on cushions these days,

I have to make sure that cushion's in a pretty good position.

Otherwise,

Sometimes your legs go to sleep,

Sometimes you get an ache or a pain,

Which is disturbing.

So I adjust the cushion.

Ah,

That's good.

Once the butt is comfortable,

Up to my back.

So you may try this,

I think it will work for most people.

You stretch your back,

Give a good stretch.

And then I let go.

And my back relaxes to an optimum position.

You may try some other ways.

If you're on a chair,

You can lean back,

Lean forward.

When you do,

The mindfulness gives you the feedback.

So you can discover what is the most comfortable for you.

And no two people are the same.

And then check my shoulders,

Allowing them to become really at ease.

You focus on one part of your body,

You get more information.

And that information allows you to check how your shoulders are right now.

And how you can ease them.

I like just using very simple visualizations,

Just imagining my two shoulder blades to be like these bunch of strings.

One on either side of the spine.

They've been stretched.

I don't know who's been stretching them,

But I can feel that something's pulling them apart.

And I tell whatever's pulling them apart to let go.

So I can release the tension.

I just do that by an act of choice.

I can feel.

Those two bunches of strings,

My shoulder muscles.

Relax.

Because you do this again and again and again,

You soon get very skilled at it.

Something which you can learn how to relax and ease your own body,

Physically.

Then down my arms,

Past my elbows,

Wrists,

Hands.

When you get to your hands,

There are so many nerve endings on your hands.

It's easy to feel them.

And I ask them,

How are you?

It's like they're another being separate from me.

Like I might ask you,

How do you feel today?

I ask my hands,

How do you feel today?

These are my own hands.

Do you need to be adjusted?

My hands said yes,

So I'm adjusting them.

Are you okay now?

Hands said,

Not yet.

But no,

They soon will be.

Yeah,

There you go.

Now they're at ease.

And I go back up to my neck.

And of course,

I've done this before.

Sometimes I put my head in a really weird position.

So now I check the head is well balanced on top of the neck.

Not far,

Too far to the right,

Not too far to the left,

Not too forward or not too far back.

What do I mean by not too far?

I can feel it.

What's the best position?

That mindfulness of the feeling sensations in my neck.

Tell me what's the best position.

You get to know that very well.

And lastly,

With your body,

Not actually lastly yet,

But almost,

You go to your face.

I can feel muscles around my eyes and my mouth.

I can feel those muscles.

They're always a little bit tight.

Once you notice them,

You soon learn how to relax them a lot.

I feel my muscles around my eyes and now starting to loosen up.

Around my eyes too.

It's like someone's been massaging them.

And it's now very loose.

This is an important thing to do because if you do have things like anxiety or fear,

You can feel that in the muscles of your face.

That's why people can see the muscles screwed up in such a way.

They say,

What are you afraid of?

What are you anxious about?

Much of the emotions are played out on your physical body.

If you learn how to relax a physical body,

You learn how to be in control of emotions.

Things like anxiety,

You can feel it coming up and you can let it go almost immediately with kindness.

Once my head is face muscles rather,

It's really relaxed,

Then I look at my whole body.

Just there's one thing,

This body like my vehicle which I plot a long life in.

As I look at it,

If I find any part which needs a bit of attention and kindness,

I'll let my attention go there,

Zoom in on it and relax it to the max.

Until I can feel my whole body just so at ease.

It's a part of which is yet to be eased off,

Go to it.

Give it lots and lots and lots and lots of kindness.

Learn how to relax parts of your own body.

Just by being here and giving it lots of compassion.

And then as usual,

I get this delightful feeling of a body relaxed.

So much more at ease than when I first came in here and sat down.

So at ease,

So delightfully relaxed.

Basically I can't see that any anxiety can enter here at all.

Not a body which is so open and peaceful and comfortable.

And I enjoy that delight for a few moments.

Then we go to our mind,

The peace-o-meter.

With your peace-o-meter,

How peaceful are you?

Inside,

One is really peaceful,

Ten is very agitated,

Thinking so much.

So from ten to one,

How peaceful are you?

And number two,

What causes that peace?

You know what relaxes your body?

What relaxes your mind?

We soon learn,

Be aware of your peace or lack of it.

Like one is aware of the tightness,

Tension in the body.

And with some kindness,

Present moment awareness,

You'll find that that peace starts to really establish itself inside.

The past is not real for you.

We always believe in that past but we add and subtract so much from it.

That's why we argue,

Who did what.

And you do learn so much more from the present than you will ever learn from the past.

This is where wisdom and compassion are born.

And now is where your future is being made.

So after a while,

We are much,

Much more in this moment we call now.

And your peace-o-meter reading starts to approach one.

And as you become peaceful,

Just please notice how peacefulness feels.

It's got a natural delight to it.

It's a wonderful place to hang out.

It heals your body.

It strengthens your mind.

You have more energy when you have peace.

And it is like going on a real holiday from all the difficulties of life.

So we get into this feeling of peace in this moment.

The more peaceful you become,

The stronger that peace feels,

The less you need to think.

Thinking isn't a cause of problems.

Thinking is because of a lack of peace inside.

Soon,

It gets so peaceful,

It's easy to do these little meditations on something like the breath.

You're deep inside now.

You just watch the breath come in,

The breath go out.

As soon as you can.

And if you want a bit of fun,

Get a bit bored,

You just want to cheer yourself up.

Do backwards breath meditation.

How in,

How in.

But not for too long.

I'm going to be quiet now.

When I start speaking again,

It will be close to the end of the meditation.

So for now,

Be peace.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Again,

Close to the end of the meditation.

How peaceful are you?

And what does peace feel like?

What cause can you notice created peacefulness?

Thank you.

Now as we take ourselves slowly out of meditation,

Bring our attention from inside to your body.

How does your body feel now?

Just sitting here.

Hopefully it's just so incredibly relaxed.

The mind is peaceful.

The body is really at ease.

Hakes and pains,

Even sicknesses tend to get very light or even disappear.

Take one finally out from the meditation.

Use the gong.

Now we'll bring that gong three times.

Please listen to every sound from the gong.

The third chime from the gong starts to disappear.

That's the signal to open your eyes.

Excellent.

Is there anyone in the sound room?

Yeah,

It's high in there.

So you've got the questions on the machine.

Thank you for sitting so quietly in there.

So usually after the meditation we have some questions.

And today,

Oh,

Good for them,

United States,

United Arab Emirates have them in Germany.

So first of all a question from Pennsylvania in USA.

Dear Ajahn,

What is Sati Sampajanya and how does one develop it?

So again your talks and meditations are very helpful in my life.

Sati Sampajanya is used a lot in meditation,

But when you look at its definitions and what it actually is,

I have to go back to the person who taught me meditation,

Ajahn Chah,

Because he would never use the term Sati Sampajanya.

He would use its equivalent which is called Sati Panya,

Mindfulness and wisdom.

This is just languages.

Sati is obviously mindfulness.

Sam is with.

Pajanya.

Pajanya gets elided to Panya.

Pajanya means Panya.

And that's just basically mindfulness with wisdom.

So it's not just mindfulness,

It is with wisdom as well.

What are you doing that for?

Is it helpful?

How does mindfulness work?

But a lot of times that mindfulness and wisdom,

The Pajanya or Panya,

It is not something which you learn from books or which you learn from listening to a monk or a nun.

It's just something which the Buddha said,

Which monks and nuns here know so well.

The Buddhas only point the way.

Each person will have to follow that path to find it out for themselves.

So sometimes words can be deceptive.

What I say is peace.

Do you know what that peace is?

And so that we eventually use these teachings to actually understand what wisdom is.

So mindfulness and wisdom,

First of all you can use that to,

Again,

As I said,

Relax your own body.

What is a relaxed body?

How does it feel?

What causes that relaxation?

This is all the wisdom.

Some people call it insight,

Understanding,

Even kindness,

Compassion.

That's all part of wisdom.

A little by little,

It's not wisdom,

It's not knowledge,

It's not intellectual.

It's much deeper than that.

It's the feeling it.

A little by little,

As we practice mindfulness and that wisdom,

Of course we become good meditators.

We understand how this body can relax.

We understand how the mind can relax.

We understand how we can just be really,

Really peaceful for long periods of time.

So why again,

Please excuse me,

But when you meditate here on a Saturday afternoon,

If ever it happens that I just,

Because it's very close sometimes,

You know,

You're meditating,

Having a wonderful time,

There's no gong to get me out of meditation.

I just have to make a determination,

Just please come out by four o'clock.

I don't know,

One of these days I'm going to lose it,

Just go right in,

Meditate,

Not ring the bell.

Because that actually happened,

That for this old story of the Vietnamese monk years ago,

Over in Sydney.

And again,

I won't tell you his name,

Vietnamese Theravada monk,

A long time ago.

And he started his nine-day retreat,

Nine days of teaching meditation.

And usually those who have been on retreat,

You know,

Just you get your briefing first of all,

Then you go for the first talk.

But no,

He did it,

Just half an hour meditation first of all,

Then he gave his talk.

Trouble was,

He never gave his talk.

He meditated for half an hour on a Friday night.

Eight o'clock he was still meditating,

Nine o'clock still meditating,

Hadn't moved.

Nine thirty,

Still meditating,

So all his students went to bed.

When they got up in the morning,

He was still meditating.

When it was breakfast time,

They went off for breakfast,

He was still meditating.

He didn't move for eight days.

No breakfast,

No lunch,

No going to the toilet,

No drinking.

Just sat there like a Buddha statue.

And after eight days he came out of his meditation and said,

Sorry,

He got into a deep meditation and just couldn't come out.

He didn't want to come out,

Basically lost track of the meaning of time.

Almost like escape from time.

So he's eight days in there having a wonderful time,

Great experience,

Fully mindful all the time.

Not asleep,

Oh no way,

Just blissed out.

But anyway,

Afterwards,

People said,

No,

No friend,

But it's nice to see those things still happen these days.

Well done.

They were just inspired to see these amazing things which meditation can do.

But he was in error there because meditators,

We know that,

He should have actually,

He's getting really close to those deep meditations.

He should say,

No,

I have to come out at this time.

I don't have compassion for others.

So he had lots of mindfulness there,

Really lots of mindfulness.

But his wisdom was a little,

Well,

Bad mark there.

Not bad mark,

You can't really say bad mark,

But could have done better by coming out earlier.

So that's what sati samvachan means,

Sati panya,

Mindfulness and wisdom.

They have to go together,

Just mindfulness,

Then you can get some anxiety coming up and all sorts of other stuff.

You get your wisdom going in there and the kindness,

Then you're fine.

From United Arab Emirates,

Dear Ajahn Brahm,

I have a breathing problem that occurs rarely.

I have to breathe heavily.

When I try to meditate,

It goes about four to five times,

Which makes me lose concentration.

No,

You don't lose concentration.

You breathe heavily.

You just have your kindness and wisdom there and you breathe heavily and just let your body breathe heavily.

That's what it needs to do.

That's what it wants to do.

So let it happen,

This wonderful kindness.

Now once the body has just had to do what it needs to do,

Then you find the body will relax with you.

Treat your body like a good friend.

It's not something you own.

And we call it my body,

But that's only just a way of speaking.

But treat it like a companion of yours.

That's why I ask my legs,

How are you doing down there?

My back,

My tummy,

How are you?

My sort of head,

Are you okay today?

And I treat it like a friend I have a good attitude towards.

When you have a good attitude towards your own body,

With kindness,

Your body will tell you,

Look,

I really need a scratch.

You don't care what other people say,

You need it.

You let your body be your friend.

And if you look after your body like a friend,

The body looks after you.

Which means if your body needs to breathe heavily,

Yes,

Breathe heavily,

Body,

That's what you need to do.

I'm with you.

And that's the point where you don't lose your mindfulness,

You're with your body,

Not fighting,

Trying to control it.

And then,

As soon as the body's done what it needs to do,

The body says,

Okay,

So what do you need to do now?

You want to be peaceful,

Okay.

And your body cooperates with you.

So you don't lose any weight.

The word concentration,

As many of you know,

I don't like that word.

Stillness,

Not concentration.

Stillness is a much kinder word than concentration.

It's much closer to the Dhamma,

The meaning of what we're supposed to be doing here.

So you don't use your stillness.

Then you're very calm.

What was that?

Yeah,

I can tell this story.

Again,

These are classic stories accumulated in my life of teaching meditation about this other fellow who could not breathe lightly at all.

He came to this retreat which I gave over in Sydney many years ago.

And the first day of the retreat I had all these questions.

Half the questions were exactly the same.

Can you please tell people to breathe quietly during meditation?

It's a silly question.

The answer was that gentleman,

He's got sinus cancer.

He checked in with me the first day of the retreat,

The first on arrival.

He said,

I can't breathe through my nose.

There's a big tumor up here.

He said,

All chemotherapy and surgery and radiation therapy,

But it's not budging.

So his doctors have given up me and said,

Okay,

There's nothing more we can do.

So like many people,

They decided to go and maybe do some meditation,

See if that works.

And so he was breathing very heavily.

And since I made that announcement,

He's only breathing heavily because he can't do anything else.

Everyone was so kind,

No more complaints at all.

Even in the interviews,

They said,

Just so happy,

It's actually inspiring us that someone is trying their very best to cure their cancer.

So for nine days he did that.

Of course,

This has got a wonderful ending to it.

So after the ninth day,

The last meditation,

So it's the last meditation,

Because people try so hard and last meditation,

It's not working,

They give up.

So the last meditation,

I was actually almost in the car,

Just getting back to the airport to fly back to Perth.

And he came running towards me.

I don't know if I must stop,

You must stop for a moment,

And just in this last meditation,

Always breathing through his mouth,

He had a popping sound.

I always remember the way he said a popping sound in his nose.

And he could breathe through his nose,

Only for one minute.

And then the tumour sort of closed up again.

That was really exciting.

That shouldn't have happened.

No sort of chemotherapy or radiation therapy did anything like that.

His meditation,

His tumour,

Reduced.

I just hired to get in the car and get to the airport.

So I just told him,

Just carry on,

Well done.

But inside,

Honestly,

I thought he'd left it too late.

He was going to die.

You can imagine my surprise when about six months later,

In Sydney,

Another venue giving a talk somewhere,

This guy came up and said,

Do you remember me?

Please don't do that to me.

I see too many people.

So when he came up and said,

Do you remember me?

I said,

No,

Who the hell are you?

I don't think I said that,

I'm more polite.

But he said he was that guy.

And honestly,

You couldn't recognise him.

You know when people are dying of cancer,

They look like they're really sick and they're thin,

They're not eating properly or whatever.

And I said,

Wow,

You're that guy?

He said,

Yeah.

And he said,

He carried on meditating and the tumour totally went.

And that just gave me such joy and happiness.

And I asked him,

What are you doing now?

And he said,

I'm going to spend the rest of the life,

However many months,

Years I have,

Just teaching other people how to meditate like this,

Because it worked for him.

Beautiful story.

But anyway,

So be kind to that breathing.

I don't know why your body has to do that,

But your body knows best that it happened.

Last question from Germany.

Sometimes the thoughts in my head are so ongoing and ongoing and not calming down.

Yes,

There's something I can do.

Thank you,

Ajahn and BSWA.

One thing which I said at the beginning of this meditation was a very powerful insight.

Don't look at the thoughts as the cause of the problem.

The thoughts are just the symptoms of a mind which isn't peaceful.

So see if you can get the mind peaceful.

Forget about the thoughts.

The symptoms on the surface,

The similitus way of looking at things,

Sometimes a different way of perceiving things like thoughts really helps.

And that is looking at these thoughts like the waves on a lake.

The waves on the lake are caused by nature.

Either some people are swimming in the lake or boats in the lake or there's wind whipping up water.

So don't make,

Try and stop those thoughts.

Because if you do,

It's like you have these waves on a lake or on a pond and you put your hands on the waves trying to pat them down,

Trying to smooth it out.

You just make more waves.

See if you can find what's causing that agitation.

The lake obviously is your mind.

What causes that agitation?

Why are you thinking so much?

Use the wisdom,

Not the force.

The whole of meditation,

And I say this carefully,

The whole of meditation depends on wisdom power,

Not willpower.

Willpower usually disturbs things.

Wisdom power sees what the problem is and can let it go.

A lot of times,

Again,

Listening to some nice teachings about caring for yourself and not criticising yourself so much and giving yourself some self-compassion.

You're not that bad.

Caring for yourself,

Looking after your body as best you can,

Relaxing,

Not judging yourself.

Those little things find you don't have to think so much.

And always believe in that other people are judging you.

They're not.

They're not thinking about you.

They're usually thinking about themselves.

So you can just forget about it and just enjoy yourself.

And that means you don't have to think so much.

So just imagine,

Your mind is like this lake.

It's got all these waves on it and that's the thinking.

You're trying to stop those waves.

Leave them alone.

And you're not thinking about thinking.

You're just thinking,

A little by little.

You can see if you can look a little underneath those waves.

And underneath the waves,

The water is much cooler and more still.

Maybe go a little bit deeper under those waves.

And you'll find it's very peaceful there,

Even though the surface is quite choppy,

As they say.

Okay,

Any questions from the audience?

One over there first of all,

Then you can come next.

Yes?

I've been practicing in the world and I've noticed particularly with the things that I'm learning from a lot,

And I've noticed there's a part of me that's able to psychologically in a situation where there's an opportunity to outline a problem.

I was sort of thinking of letting go of it and then a few days later I had this feeling where many people say about it.

I was still a little bit confused there about me and my having to let go.

Is it the need to be wanting it or is it the opportunity you want to have?

I'll just repeat that because this is heard all over the world.

So you've been doing a lot of letting go in your life recently and you find you've had to let go of a couple of really,

Really,

Really big things in your life.

And you find that intellectually,

Rationally you've let go,

But there's still some twinges come back every now and again.

So of course these are like echoes from the past.

A little by little those echoes,

They reverberate but then they get less and less and less.

They disappear by themselves after a while.

I know there's some people,

They've had great tragedies in their life.

I remember this one fellow,

His son graduated I think in,

I don't think he mind me telling people about this,

I won't say any names,

In electrical engineering or something,

Got a job with Western Power and was just taken on the job I think over in Kalgoorlie somewhere.

And his supervisor took him into this big transformer generator,

Whatever they call it,

And he got electrocuted and died quite a painful death.

He was only about 21,

22.

His mum and dad were obviously devastated.

And I remember his mum and dad would come to Bodhinyana monastery.

I remember him just saying and saying it even in the TV and the newspapers,

I can never be happy again.

That's what he said and that's how it felt at the time.

If you saw him today you'd never think that's that father.

He's a very happy,

Wonderful man,

Very joyful.

Sometimes you might think of his son but then mostly he has moved on.

He's got no choice.

And afterwards,

Years later,

You look back upon those experiences and you say you learned so much from them.

That's a wonderful thing.

You learn about letting go.

It's not easy.

And you will have some echoes come back every now and again.

But let those echoes come back.

We have this saying,

The door of my heart is open to you.

I always remember doors have two purposes,

One to go in,

One to go out.

So you also let those memories go as well.

So the same door they came in.

Okay,

I have your question.

I was just wondering about the Ramajana Jai Sahaja Yoga,

The Pāṇḍa Pī that came impressed on your chest?

Oh,

Those ones,

Yes.

It's very fun to pass them.

Is that just in their mind?

Yes,

That's it.

Are there any Thai people here?

They call it Pāṇḍa Pī.

And it's just like sometimes you're laying down at night time and you feel like there's something pressing down you,

You can't move and you get really scared.

It's like something,

People perceive it as like some spirit or ghost on top of you.

But all that really is,

Is just to do with the brain.

It's a physical thing.

It's nothing spiritual or scary.

It's just some of your brain has turned on and others haven't turned on.

That's why it usually happens when you wake up in the morning.

And if anything like that happens,

When we worry about it,

We amplify it and it gets a big scary thing.

We can't move,

We can't even scream,

We can't say anything.

So instead of doing that,

Just relax.

Okay,

Ghost,

If you think it's a ghost,

You can be on top of me as long as you like.

And when you have kindness and acceptance,

You're not feeding that fear,

Then your brain will slowly turn back on again,

As it always does.

So it's a physical phenomena.

I know you ask any neurologist,

They've got a name,

They told me a long time ago,

So it's nothing sort of dangerous or whatever.

But if ever that happens,

You lose that ability to do anything or say anything.

Or if any of you have those experiences,

It's very rare,

But it does happen sometimes,

People astral travel,

They leave their body floating up.

Sometimes they used to say,

Oh,

This is so hard to get back in again,

Because they're scared.

So what to do?

You can make use of a very common hypnotic technique.

When you've got someone under hypnosis,

The hypnotist always says,

I'm going to take you out of hypnosis now,

After the count of ten,

Ten,

Nine,

Eight,

Seven,

Six,

Five,

Four,

Three,

Two,

One,

Out.

And a person comes out.

It's the same thing if ever you get flying through the air,

And astral traveling,

You want to come back again,

Just tell your brain,

Or whatever,

Turn it very softly,

But firmly,

Go back into your body after the count of ten.

You need to give it time to prepare and just not be so aggressive,

Get in now.

That's not the way to look after yourself.

Ten,

Nine,

Eight,

Now do it slowly.

The same if you feel that you can't move.

Just suggest to your brain,

After the count of ten,

I'll be able to move again.

Ten,

Nine,

Eight,

Seven,

Six,

Five,

Four,

Three,

Two,

One,

And then your brain will turn on.

That's usually the best way of doing it.

Simple solution,

But it's real for people,

And of course for people,

A bit of distress,

But it's not dangerous at all.

Okay,

Any other questions before we finish off?

Okay,

Thanks for all those questions,

Interesting questions,

A good class.

Thank you.

So now I'll just pay respects to the Buddha,

Dhamma,

Sangha,

And then you can stay for a little chat if you wish,

Then afterwards I'm going to somebody's house to bless it.

Okay.

Okay.

Reviews

Wonderful sense of humor. Great talks and such a nice meditation. 🧘‍♀️ Thank you. ☮💖🙏