Day 337/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

Ajahn Brahm delivers 15 minutes of dharma talk/meditation advice and inspiration, followed by 45 minutes of semi-guided meditation (about 20 minutes guided meditation and about 25 silent meditation). At the end of the meditation practice, there are community questions and answers.

Ajahn Brahm talks about the relationship between the inclination of the mind and meditation practice.

Transcript

Hello,

Welcome to the meditation class on Sat Dhi afternoon.

And always have to make this announcement.

If there's anyone coming for the introduction to meditation class,

That is held in the room to my right.

This is the ongoing class where we sit meditation for about 40 minutes,

45 minutes.

So those coming to learn meditation for the first time,

It's more appropriate to be in the first class.

First of all,

The introduction to meditation class,

Because later on you'll be sitting for a long time.

For many people,

Sitting for 40 minutes is a long time when they can first start meditating.

After a while you can build up to it,

But not when you start.

So actually usually the longer you sit,

In generally speaking,

The deeper you get in meditation,

Simply because you're resisting the mind from getting involved in the world,

From thinking,

From planning,

After a while when your eyes close,

If you sit long enough,

You run out of things to think about,

In theory anyway.

I know that people have many things to think about,

But if you sit long enough,

You may stop and become silent.

But just the very fact you're closing your eyes and sitting still,

It does have an effect of slowing and calming the mind down.

It can't do so much,

It can't travel so far.

And by so doing,

You find the longer you sit,

In general,

The more peaceful you become.

Obviously,

It doesn't just depend on how long you sit,

It's also the quality and just the inclination of the mind while you're meditating.

That's why the inclination of the mind should always be to letting go of things,

Not to attaining things.

This is not only a teaching of Ajahn Chah,

Whose birthday is today,

June 16th,

It's his birthday ceremonies,

I still remember that.

And he was a great teacher,

He said,

You meditate not to get things but to abandon things.

And that's also part of the Buddhist teachings as well.

And I was reminded of that by the monk in Indonesia,

Who when asked why people come to the temples,

Sometimes they go out afterwards more angry than when they came in.

And his answer was,

Because Indonesia,

Many Buddhists go to the temples to get something,

To get good luck,

To make merit,

To get their problem solved.

It's always getting something rather than giving something away.

He said that's one of the reasons why they go with even more defilements,

Go out with even more defilements when they go home.

It's a very,

Very powerful,

Subtle point and I commend that monk for saying that.

His name was Ven.

Sri.

Panyawaro,

A very nice monk who lives in Indonesia.

Very close to Bodh Pador temple,

The famous monument.

And sometimes you ask yourself when you meditate,

What are you meditating for?

Are you meditating with the attitude of trying to get something out of this?

To try and get peace,

To get your problems solved?

Even some people,

I hate to admit this,

But they meditate to see the lottery numbers.

If you're doing it to try and get something,

You're not going to get anywhere except just frustration.

So the way of meditation is a way of learning how to abandon things.

And the thing we're really abandoning when we do meditation is not our external possessions.

When you close your eyes,

You pretty much forget about those.

Not even like abandoning these ideas of even past or future,

Even though that's an important stage of the meditation.

The real thing you're trying to abandon is this being inside,

Which always controls and interferes and judges and manages and complains.

It's that inner thing,

You might call it a being if you like,

That inner thing which always interferes and messes up the process of peace.

Because if you could sit and learn how to know what I mean by that controller inside of you,

As you see that,

To focus on that and to let that go,

To drop that one,

You'll find that the meditation goes very,

Very peaceful and very,

Very still.

It goes what I call like naturally,

Because this controller,

This interferer,

Is not messing up the whole process.

And then when you sit for long periods of time,

The longer you sit,

The more peaceful you get.

The more peaceful you get,

The deeper you get.

The deeper you get,

The more blissful you get.

Simply because you're letting go of this thing which messes up the whole process of meditation.

If you sit for long periods of time trying to beat your record,

Which I remember doing that as a young student,

See how long you could sit.

Feeling so good if you beat your record,

Now I could get 45 minutes,

Now 50,

Now I've got the hour,

Way,

Let's go for 2 hours.

In extreme agony and pain,

Sitting for such a long time,

Getting absolutely nowhere except just tense.

That's not the way of meditation,

That's trying to get something.

But if you meditate with the idea of letting go of things,

It's a lot to be natural.

How do you find you can sit for long periods?

Naturally without determining to do so,

It just happens.

And it gets so peaceful and deep.

Because you're letting go of abandoning this controller inside.

Because this controller inside is actually what disturbs the process.

If you look at the mind,

And I've used this symbol,

Many other teachers have used this symbol,

The symbol on the mind is like a lake.

And the idea is to calm that lake down.

The waves on the lake surface change from being sort of big high waves,

To small ripples,

And then small ripples,

To the glassy smooth lake.

So there's not even a ripple on the surface of that lake,

A completely still body of water.

If you think that's the way that the meditation should be working,

It's a very good simile.

Having a mind which is so still,

There's not even a ripple of a thought or a movement of the mind into wanting something on that lake.

And that simile also works because when that lake is very still,

It acts as a mirror which can reflect the scenery around it.

If there's mountains around it,

You can see the mountains reflected in the glassy still surface of that lake.

Or at night time you can see the moon.

Perfect without any deformity,

Only when that body of water is absolutely still.

And that gives a very good metaphor how the still mind can act as a vehicle of insight,

Of seeing things very clear,

Because it reflects accurately without distortions.

And the distortions are made by the waves,

By the ripples even.

So it gives you an idea,

A nice metaphor for the mind to work on,

What you're supposed to be doing in this meditation,

In this mind absolutely still.

And then it begs the question,

How does this mind become still?

Please understand how I frame that question,

Not how you make it still,

Because you cannot make it still,

As I'm going to show in a couple of seconds.

How does that lake become still?

And that lake becomes still when you stop interfering with it,

When you sort of bat out of the process of meditation,

When you let go,

Or what I usually say in this simile,

You stop patting down the waves,

You stop putting your hands in the water trying to make it still,

You just recede away,

You disengage,

And things become peaceful and still all by themselves.

We call that detaching.

We call that letting go.

We call that opening the door of your heart to this moment no matter what it is.

We call that just standing back with equanimity.

Equanimity,

The Pali word is upeka,

Which literally means just looking on,

Not doing anything but looking on,

Having a mindfulness which doesn't disturb what it's looking at.

Or in that simile of the still forest pool by Ajahn Chah,

Which you just can watch and the animals you are watching don't know you are there because you are so still,

That your observation does not interfere with the object.

You are looking on without doing anything,

Without moving,

Without disturbing the process of the lake carving down.

If one understands how the mind works and how meditation works,

It becomes very clear what you are supposed to do when you meditate.

You sit down,

You look at your body first of all,

You do have a bit of controlling,

A bit of effort.

I often tell the monks,

Your effort stops when you sit down on your cushion or stool.

It's the effort to get there.

Once you are there,

You are sitting on your stool,

You are sitting on the chair,

Effort is just to relax the body,

Get it nice and still,

And from there you start to disengage.

You start to stop controlling your body and also stop controlling your mind.

With a stop controlling your body,

Again that's a very beautiful process.

Every time that you are out of meditation,

If there is a cough,

You cough,

If there is an itch,

You scratch,

If there is a disturbance,

You just do something about it.

But after you have got yourself the basic comfort of meditation,

You just disengage from the body.

You say basically just like you left your car in the car park,

Or by the park outside.

Now you have locked it,

You put on the alarm,

It's secure,

So you can come in here and you don't have to carry your car into this meditation hall with you.

You have let it go outside because you know it's safe.

Same with this body,

You sit it down,

You close its eyes,

You make it comfortable,

It's almost like you parked your car,

But now it's not your car with four tyres,

It's your body with the two legs.

You parked it,

Locked it up,

Saying goodbye body,

I'll go back to you in 45 minutes.

That's what gives you a way of letting go of this body,

Interfering with it,

And it comes up,

It's not my business.

If it's a lake in the body,

No,

Not my business.

You completely ignore it,

You don't get involved at all.

What happens when you do disengage from the body,

Is the body disappears.

You can't feel the hands,

You can't feel the legs,

The back,

The head.

And the body gets so tranquil.

We call that in the Pali as Kaya Pasati,

The tranquility of the body.

It's hard for me to understand when I first read that word,

What does it mean tranquility of the body?

But you compare that with your experience in meditation,

It's very obvious to me that means when the body gets so still,

So tranquil,

It disappears.

It settles,

And so it's not on your radar screen anymore,

Which is a modern way of saying it.

When these things aren't a problem to you anymore,

They're one less thing to worry about,

One less burden to carry,

One less thing to interfere with your process towards peace.

So by letting go of the body,

By disengaging from it,

By settling it down,

Being kind,

Settling it down,

And leaving it alone,

It gets so peaceful until it's not there anymore.

When you compare that experience when the body disappears and so tranquil,

With the experience of when you're walking around,

Or you're sitting,

Watching the TV,

Or having your lunch,

You realise just how disturbing this body is,

How demanding it is of attention,

How it never lets you stop.

And now you've got a place where the body has stopped interfering with your peace.

You can compare the two,

The kyapa side of the tranquility of the body,

When you're sitting here,

Completely cut off from your body,

Oh that's so much bliss,

So nice,

So still,

So peaceful.

It's important to understand that when you disengage from the body,

The body settles down and at last gives you some peace and happiness,

Real happiness of the body,

Because it's not interfering with you anymore.

Buddha said the body is suffering.

Now when you get to the stage of kyapa side,

When you're just watching in the mind,

The body disappears,

It's probably the only time when the body feels good,

Because it doesn't feel at all.

It's gone,

You've settled.

And you've seen people here,

Whether they're monks or lay people,

Just sitting,

Absolutely still,

Sometimes way beyond the end of the meditation,

They're sitting there so still,

How can anyone hold their body that still?

Now you still interest me when I first saw some of these monks sitting so still for hours,

How can you sit still?

It's incredible will power I thought.

And now I realise it's not will power at all,

It's actually disengagement.

They disengage from the body so much,

That's why the body is comfortable.

So you don't make the body comfortable,

You stand back and it becomes comfortable by itself.

And that gives you an indication of what we mean by the mind,

We're just not trying to get somewhere but trying to let go of controlling.

If that works with the body,

That's also the clue of how that works with the mind as well.

Whatever you are observing in the mind,

Whether it's a restless thought,

Whether it's a lazy thought,

Whatever mood or emotion is in there,

We just stand back and not interfere with it.

We let it go.

So I was saying last night,

The three parts of right intention,

The second factor of the eightfold path,

Is this movement of the mind to let go,

Let go of controlling,

To renounce.

The movement of the mind which is just kind.

And real kindness doesn't want to change the object,

You're just happy for it to be there as it is.

And the gentleness which has no violence at all,

Which completely lets go and is quiet.

These are the three ways of right intention.

So by doing this,

We are allowing the mind to slow down and become still and peaceful.

This is the path of meditation.

This is how it works.

And so little by little,

We disengage from the mind.

We allow the ripples which start sometimes off as waves,

The waves become ripples and the ripples become so still and calm that there is no more movement on our mind.

The mind becomes still.

The reason it becomes still is because we haven't interfered.

Minute after minute after minute.

And then the longer you sit,

The more still the mind becomes.

Just like the lake,

The longer the wind doesn't blow,

The more chance that lake has of becoming absolutely still.

The longer no one interferes with it,

The more that surface is going to be like glass.

In those moments of stillness,

When there is nothing agitating the lake which is your mind,

When there is nothing moving it,

Then you will find there is a true reflection.

This is the way that meditation works.

While we meditate,

Not to get something but to let go of interfering.

So that's a little bit of instructions before we begin.

Anyone got any comments or questions about that before we begin?

Hopefully I've set the mood okay.

Okay,

Let's give it a try.

So if you'd like to sit in your meditation posture and get ready.

Once again,

Anyone coming for the beginning meditation class,

Introduction meditation class,

Please remember that that class is held in the room to my right.

For those who can sit quietly for 45 minutes or more.

Okay,

So if you'd like to get yourself comfortable and then we can start the meditation.

So again,

To get yourself comfortable in the first few minutes,

By adjusting your posture,

Your garments,

With your eyes closed you're always more sensitive.

I usually give myself a couple of minutes at least,

To settle down with my eyes closed.

Until my awareness of my body is clear enough to know that my body is in a good posture.

It takes a couple of minutes for sensitivity to arise.

Okay.

Now settling the body down.

There are areas in the body which are irritating or in pain.

Try sending caring attention to that part of the body.

As if you're massaging that pain or that tightness with mindfulness.

Easing,

Soothing,

Relaxing.

Giving quality time to your body.

Good enough.

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But if as you relax,

As you disengage,

You understand what we mean by letting go of the controller.

The feedback mechanism supplied by mindfulness will show you the waves,

The disturbances.

The agitation of the mind gets less and less.

When you notice,

You go through present moment,

Awareness and silence on the way to your breath.

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