Day 331/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

15 minutes of dharma talk/meditation inspiration followed by 45 minutes of semi-guided meditation. There are some useful questions and answers at the end of the meditation practice. Ajahn talks about the force that takes us out of the moment, pushing us away from silence, from the stillness necessary for meditation practice and what to do about it.

Transcript

Okay, It's just at 3 o'clock now so I can start today's class. Somebody did ask me today, Can you please talk about something, A concept in meditation, This is quite a refined concept, Called the outflowings of the mind. It's a very powerful concept in Buddhism. What that actually is, Is whenever you are meditating especially, You can see there's a force which tries to take you out of the moment, Out from where you are, Pushing you away from this moment, Away from silence, Away from the breath, Whatever you're watching, Always pushing you away. We call that the outflowings of the mind. That particular force stops you becoming still. You can imagine if the point of meditation is like getting the mind to be still in one place and letting that mind stillness settle, Deepen, Solidify. These outflowings just take you out all over the place. It's just like a kid sitting at home. You can never sit still, Always want to go over here, Over there, Anywhere but where you're actually sitting. We call that the outflowings of the mind. It's one of the ways of looking at restlessness when you start meditating. You start to think, I got the sound in me. Last night we had the, Oh no, Just getting some chairs. On a Friday night when we do a talk, The sound of this microphone goes into the other room. Sometimes those on the introductory to meditation class can also hear my talk as well. That's what Dennis was coming in for, Just getting a few seats. That outflowings of the mind which moves the mind from where you are sitting or where you are to somewhere else is one of the great causes of restlessness. It's one of those things we have to somehow resist, Somehow to let go of, Sometimes to subdue until the mind is sitting down and doesn't want to go anywhere. I mention this because at first it doesn't require a little bit of subduing, A little bit of effort, A little bit of saying no, Which is why when we start meditating we sit down and we tell our mind what it's supposed to be doing. We just set the parameters. This is what we want to do for the next half an hour. What that really means is that we come here, We sit down in one particular space, In one of our seats, We tell the mind this is our meditation time. It's not the time to start thinking, Planning, Remembering. We tell our mind not to go away, Not to go out, Not to wander off. When we tell our mind to do these things, I've called it in my meditation retreats, Programming mindfulness. It's giving those instructions, Not complicated instructions, Not repeated instructions, Simple instructions said once or twice in such a way that the mind understands it's clear, It's precise. You'll be quite surprised that once you make those suggestions clearly precise, Your mind will actually behave just like any other being. You train that being, You train a dog, You train a cat, You train anybody, Your children, Sometimes, Sometimes wives training their husbands. Whatever it is you train to be able to, For this particular case, For your mind to stay still and we do that just by telling the mind at the very beginning this is our meditation time, Not the time to go out. Because you can see just go around thinking of your family, Of your work, Of your health, Of your house, Of your work, Whatever it is you're doing. When you send the mind out from this job of meditation, There's no possibility of becoming peaceful, Becoming free. So that's first of all, To stop those outflowings of the mind, We just have to instruct our mind exactly what we want it to do. Don't forget to do that when you meditate because sometimes you sit down, Especially if you meditated many, Many times, You sit down and you just let the mind just do whatever it wants without any instructions. It's okay to let the mind go but give it some instructions, Give it some parameters and you'll find the mind will happily stay within those parameters and it will just become nice and peaceful. So that's the first thing actually, Give yourself some instructions, Simple instructions at the very beginning of the meditation. Number two, You'll find that first of all I ask you to sit down and make the body nice and comfortable, When the body is nice and comfortable, That stops the mind going out to the body because if you look at the mind and if you imagine the mind to be inside of you, If that mind goes out to your body, Itching, Scratching, Whatever else you are doing, Fidgeting, You find again you can never get any peace or any stillness. If the body is moving, The mind will also start to move as well, Which means you can't get any stillness or any peace. So to stop the mind going out onto your body, We just make it very comfortable first of all. We make it comfortable, Relaxed, At ease. We call that contentment of the body. I think you understand what I mean. If your body is aching, It's itching, It's too hot, It's too cold, It's too tired, It's very hard to be still. But when you get into a beautiful posture, It's comfortable, Relaxed, You feel good, There's not too many aches and pains, That comfort in the body leads to a sense of contentment which stops the mind wandering off. You don't need to scratch, You don't need to cough, You don't need to adjust the body, You don't need to fidget. The mind doesn't go out to do those things. Which is why in meditation I teach here every Saturday, I've put a lot of emphasis spending at least five minutes just relaxing and making the body comfortable. Then you can actually, Instead of going out into the body, You tend to find yourself going in, Into the center of the body where your mind lives. I don't mean physically, I mean metaphorically, Right in. Going in is the opposite of these, What we call the assholes, These outflowings of the mind. If you stop those outflowings, You stay still, You go in the opposite direction which is going inwards. Which is why sometimes we call meditation centering ourselves. You can see centering is the opposite of going out, It's going in. So you go in to the body. And then the next thing you notice, Your mind. That mind can be very, Very restless itself, Always going out into the past or the future. So we call it centering in time. You can notice as you start to center in time, Again the mind wants to go off into the future. What are you going to do next when you leave here? All the jobs you have to do later on this afternoon. Where are you going to go tonight? What are you going to do tomorrow? It's a long weekend. What are you going to do on Monday, Tuesday, Next week, Next year? That is the outflowing of the mind, Going out from where it lives, Which is in this moment. Or going out in the opposite direction to the past. Your past is endless. And please don't follow that myth that by thinking of the past, You can deal with it all. The path is an endless, Endless, Endless thing. Sometimes, You know what it's like, Sometimes you're sorting out a cupboard, You're sorting out old photographs, And sometimes it's going to take forever. So instead of sorting it all out, You just get the whole lot and put it in the bin. And it's taken away by the recycling people. And then you're free of it. It's all done. It's finished. So that's one of the nicest things. The past is just so big, Huge, You can't deal with it all. So it's much nicer just to throw it all away, Especially in meditation. So don't allow the mind to go out to the past or out to the future. Keep it in the center of time. Understand what the center of time is. I think you understand what I mean. It's right now, This very present moment. Centering. And when you find your mind going off to the future or the past, That's the outflowings. Now why does it do that? And again, Just the same way that I said, If your body is nice and comfortable and at ease, You have this contentment of the body, Then your mind doesn't go out to sort of scratch, To fidget. The same way that if your mind can be in the center of time and can find some ease and some comfort there, Which is relaxed in the moment, Then you find it doesn't go out to the past or the future. It doesn't need to. The reason why those outflowings happen is because of discontent. You're not happy enough in the moment. Which is another reason why to get that happiness in the moment, We use what we call kindness. Be kind to this moment. It's not the best. This hall could be better. We could have thicker under-felt on the carpets. The chairs could be more comfortable. We could have these lazy boys for every person who sits down in this hall. We could have personal air conditioning, A little tube which falls from the roof, And you can get your specific temperature. We could actually get these chairs where you can move back or move forward or to the left or the right just to support your body perfectly. We could have these meditation cushions. You can just press a button and it warms up if your bottom is too cold or if it cools. Those of you who have been to Japan and seen these high-tech toilets, Which they have, Even the seat gets warmed up. Press the right button, You get the right temperature to sit on. Imagine you had one of those, A bit softer than those for your meditation chair. You can imagine that, Yeah, You can always get it more comfortable, But that is endless. So instead, We just are content with what we have in this moment. What we're doing there to get that contentment, Remember contentment stops the outflowers. To arrive at that contentment, We remember another powerful perception in Buddhist meditation, Which is called no-fault finding. Because as soon as you find fault with the present moment, And there's plenty of faults there, As soon as you look for finding faults, You can't stay in this moment. It's not good enough. You want to fix it up, Change it, Alter it. But the fault-finding mind is not a true mind, It's not a wise mind. Instead of a fault-finding mind, Which is very negative, We have a mind of gratitude, Of appreciation, Which is what kindness really is. If you look at your partner, You can always find heaps and heaps of faults in him or her. There's no way you can have a nice relationship that way. If you have a relationship of kindness, Compassion, Then it doesn't see the faults, It accepts them, And it just sees all the other beautiful qualities, Which means you can stay with that person. So fault-finding creates discontent. Discontent creates these outflowings. You just move out, You go somewhere else. In this mind, When present moment, Instead of fault-finding, Seeing all the things wrong with it, You see all the things right with it. A sense of appreciation, Of kindness, This is good enough, This is fine, I can love this moment, This is wonderful, Thank you for being here. One of the ways of doing that, Even the teaching of the Buddha, Is just realizing that you're actually here and you don't have to do anything. You're not at work, You're not at home, You're not driving through the traffic, You're not in hospital, You're not in school, You're just free. It's deliberately appreciating the fact that I can meditate. I've got 45 minutes, Especially for me, And no one's going to ask me a question in those 45 minutes after I just stopped talking during the meditation. At last, I can rest my mouth, I can just sit and enjoy myself. So whenever I meditate, That's what I think, And say, Wow, Isn't it wonderful, This is a holiday, I'm appreciating it. How many of you, When you go on holiday, Take your iPhone and just check your emails and do all your work and take all the stuff which you're supposed to be leaving behind, That's why you go on holidays, Do you take all that work with you when you go on holiday? Don't be crazy. So the same when you meditate, Don't take work with you when you close your eyes and sit and meditate, Leave all that behind. Leave all the fault-finding and have this beautiful mind of compassion, This is good enough. If you have that low fault-finding, Instead of appreciation, Gratitude, Kindness to this moment, You develop contentment. With contentment, The mind doesn't want to go anywhere else. It doesn't go out to the past, It doesn't go out to the future. It doesn't even go out to the verbal function of the mind, The thinking, The naming, The conversation. That too is an outflowing of the mind. That's why sometimes they call it verbal diarrhea. But this is what happens when you've got your mouth closed, But still the same sort of stuff is happening between your ears. Just thoughts go on and on and on. It is like diarrhea because it just keeps on coming out and out and out and out and out and doesn't stop. So that sort of diarrhea, Why does it come out anyway? Why do you think so much? Why do you worry so much? The point is, Is because you're not content in the silence. Too many fault-finding, Too much business, Too many things to be done, It's an outflowing of the mind. Can you imagine keeping all that energy inside? So thinking takes off a lot of mental energy. As many of you know, When you've been thinking very much, You feel just worn out. When you've had a hard day at work, When you've had to make many decisions and sort out many problems, It's just so tiring. Imagine that that energy is not wasted. It doesn't leave, It doesn't go out from your body, But stays inside. You get enormously strong, Powerful, Energetic states of mind. So don't allow the energy to go out. Keep it in this moment and in the silence so the mind doesn't go out into thinking. As it goes deeper, You can take it deeper into the next stage every time I talk about meditation, The breathing. To focus it inside, You use this meditation object of the breath, Just knowing the breath, Being the breath, And feeling the sensation of the breath as it goes into your body and out of your body. Stay in that little area of just breath perception. So everything else, You don't go out to everything else. You stay with the breath. Now it might happen that somebody may cough, There may be the dogs bark next door, Or somebody starts their lawnmower, Or all these other distractions. Don't let the mind go out to those distractions. Stay focused on your breath. That's your home. That's where we're abiding. So if you do hear these other noises or distractions, They're out there somewhere. You don't go out to them. You can hear them, But you don't send the mind out to them. You don't send your mind out to the sounds. You don't send them out to the distractions. You keep it still inside. Keep it in. Don't let it go out. Just like keeping the dog inside the house so it doesn't wander out and get into all sorts of mischief. Always keep it in. As you keep it in, You're going away from these outflights. As you go in, You find out that you're content with the breath, The breath becomes delightful. Even go in to the breath. Instead of going outwards, You're going in, In, In. As you go into the breath, That's where you find the delightful breath. For those of you who've done this meditation deeper, You go actually into the next stage. The breath disappears. You go in where you can't feel the breath. It is beautiful lights. We call them nimittas, These incredible, Wonderful visions inside the mind of beautiful lights. If you really want to take this meditation further, Just go into them. Don't go out from them. The only reason you go out again is because you're not content with whatever's happening. Contentment means you don't do anything. Contentment means there's no faults which you can see, So you just leave it alone. If whatever happens, This is good enough. I'm not going to control these things. It's not as if I have any power over these things anyway. I just let them go. Let them be. Just let them exist without doing anything. Because contentment leads to a stillness, A stillness of the will. So you're not disturbing the process. Then you find you continue to go in, In, In. In meditation, You first of all, You have to stop that tendency which we developed in life. You're in your car and you're looking outside the window. You're in your home and you're looking for what you want to do next. If you're always inside but looking out the window at what's going on outside rather than what's going on inside. So instead of this metaphor of being in a room or looking out of the window, We're in the room and we look inside the room, Not out the window. We're in the moment. We look in the moment. We don't look out to the past or the future. We're in the silence. We don't look out into the words. We're in the breath. We don't look out to all those other distractions. We're in this nimitta. We just look inside the nimitta rather than look outside. Always looking in. You find that becomes a part of meditation. Always going in, In, In, In. Never going on, On, On. Even those of you who read all these books and say this is one stage of meditation, This is the next stage of meditation, This is the next stage of meditation. Even that is these outflows of the mind. You go out onto the next stage, Out onto the next stage, Out onto the next stage. Always going out, On. That's our life sometimes. Always going on to the next thing. Always going outwards, Outwards, Outwards, Outwards, Outwards, Outwards. Never staying home. Never finding any peace. Never knowing stillness. That's the problem with the afterwards. We have to keep it inside. Okay, So that's a quick talk about these outflows of the mind for one of the members here who asked me to talk about that. Now again, Anyone here for the introduction to meditation class, This is for those who haven't meditated before, That's why I gave a deeper aspect of meditation. This is the deeper understandings of how meditation works. For those coming for the beginning classes, This is the meditation class, That's in the room to my right. This is the ongoing class. Okay, So having given that little bit of an instruction, If you'd like to get yourselves comfortable again, If you have a stretch if you want to, A scratch, Adjust your legs, Whatever, In one minute we can actually start today's meditation class. . So when you're ready, You close your eyes. And bring attention inwards into your body. So you know how the mind goes outside of this room, Outside of this suburb, Even sometimes outside of this country. Keep it in, Bring it in. And remind yourself that this time, This 40, 45 minutes, We're dedicating to meditation, To stillness, To peace, To relaxation of the body and the mind. This is not the time for working out all your problems or doing your business. Reminding you of that stops the mind going out to those things. It sets parameters to guide your meditation for the next 40 minutes. . And as you bring your mind inside into your body, Just notice any sensations in your body, Especially the most prominent sensation. That's usually an ache or an irritation, Which could turn into a full-fledged pain later on. So instead of just letting it just develop into a big distraction for you, Adjust your body now. Feed it, Scratch, Cough, Whatever you need to do. Loosen your belt or bits of clothing. So your body is really as comfortable as you possibly can make it. Be kind to your body. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No. Have a look at the teachings of the Buddha. I refer you to Arana Vibhanga Sutta in the Majjhima Nikaya. Arana Vibhanga Sutta. There the Buddha describes two different types of pleasures. One to be followed, One not to be followed. The ones not to be followed are the pleasures of the five senses. The pleasures of the mind. The Buddha said, Follow those. Develop them, Do not be afraid of them. Bhawetabhang, Naba Yitabhang, I say, Witabhang, Bahuli Katabhang. I just say that in Pāri to impress people. You don't really know if I'm saying it truly or not because none of you know Pāri, But that's actually what it says. And this is one of the great myths in Buddhism. People think you're not supposed to enjoy anything. They think otherwise you'll be clinging. That is actually wrong. Look in the past Sādhi Kṛṣūta, The Dīga Nikāya, Where the Buddha was saying that if you cling, Enjoy, Make much of the four jhanas, There's only four results of that. This is enjoying the pleasures of meditation. If you enjoy the pleasures of meditation, The only consequences are the first, Second, Or third or fourth stage of enlightenment. Stream-winning, Once-returning, Non-returning, Out-happening. This is what happens when you enjoy the pleasures of the mind. Straight from the word of the Buddha. If you doubt, I can show it to you afterwards. Inside what? Yeah? No, If you look at the, It says the ekāyana practice, It's not only way, That's a very poor translation. Ekāyana, Ekā means one, Āyana means going. Ask any Pali scholar the mistake of ekāyana. Yana is vehicle, But it doesn't mean yana, It's ayana, It's a going. Have a look in any of the modern translations of the Satipatthana Sūta. And every Satipatthana is preceded by vinaya loke abhijo-domanasan, Usually translated very poorly as having abandoned grief and covetousness for the world. If you look at the commentaries in the Pali, You'll see that what that means is having abandoned the five hindrances. That's what that phrase means. That's what you have to do before you do the Satipatthana if you want to get enlightenment. Abandon the five hindrances. And that job is done by the jhanas. The Satipatthana actually includes the jhana practice. The five hindrances are the things we have to abandon in order to develop the seven. The seven bhojangas are what you develop once the five hindrances are overcome. Five hindrances? Ten? No, No, There's only five hindrances. No, Only five hindrances. Okay, Well people are leaving now. So if you want to come up to discuss further, You're most welcome. So we'll call it a day now. So thank you for coming. If you please come up and we can talk some more if you wish to. And any and all, We pay respects to Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha, If you please, Before we go, And then we can all sort of depart.

Reviews

I loved this teaching. It was so helpful to my practice. Thank you.

Lovely talk and gently led meditation. Truly learn something new each time. This one had great insight on quieting the mind. Thank you. ☮🤟🙏