Day 344/365: 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 minutes of silent meditation). After the meditation practice, there is a Q&A session with the community.

Transcript

Welcome everybody to the ongoing meditation class.

This is for those who have already meditated before.

Those who are coming to the Introduction to Meditation class,

That is being held in the room to my right.

On this ongoing class,

We choose a particular aspect of meditation to talk about.

So the instructions given before we meditate are not general,

They are usually specific to some aspect of meditation.

And I got a letter last week from a person who was starting to see beautiful visions in the meditation,

They were asking me what they mean and how to deal with them.

So I am going to start talking about that in this afternoon's meditation class.

Because it does happen that a person gets into a peaceful state of mind,

They follow the instructions of being in the present moment,

Just getting a bit of silence,

Being able to see the breath,

To observe the feeling of the breath as it goes in and goes out.

And soon as they follow the instructions,

The breath becomes very peaceful,

Very soft,

And then usually the body tends to disappear and you can start to see things in the mind,

Like mental images rather than physical images.

Basically the body is calmed down,

Becomes still,

Is no longer grabbing the attention of the mind,

So the mind is free to actually investigate its own world,

The mental world.

And of course because there are not so many physical distractions,

The mental world can become very clear.

And sometimes the people do just have beautiful visions.

And this particular person who wrote one of the things which I noticed when they describe these visions,

It's the quality of their mind when they are having these experiences.

If you feel peaceful,

If it's joyful,

If it's blissful,

That is more important to me as a teacher than what you actually see.

It's the effective quality of those visions which are important.

In other words,

It doesn't matter whether you are seeing sea-scapes or mountains or rivers or whatever,

It's just how you react to it in your mind.

And if it's peace,

If it's joy,

If it's bliss,

Well done,

Carry on.

And I say carry on because a lot of times when interesting things happen in one's meditation,

You always want to know,

Is this safe,

Am I doing the right thing,

And what should I do,

Should I do anything,

What's going to happen next,

Because you want to find out where you are and what's happening in these experiences which are quite unique.

And basically if the effective tone is peaceful,

Blissful,

Joyful,

Then the advice is just carry on.

If the effective tone is one of fear,

Then see if you can abandon that fear and change the fear into something which is more joyful.

Because a lot of times these experiences,

Because they are unknown,

Unfamiliar,

Too often we can just destroy their beneficial value just by reacting adversely with fear,

Especially because of what the heck is going on.

So number one,

They are natural,

They are good,

Just carry on and enjoy them.

But if the effective quality is sometimes fearful because of the quality of the vision,

I like to bring up the story,

When during one of my meditations a long time ago,

I just got a vision,

The body was nice and peaceful,

Disappearing,

The breath was just so soft and easy,

Then a vision came into my mind of the monster.

And it was a very scary monster came right in front of me,

And his big bulging eyes,

Bloodshot,

The eyes were almost coming out of their sockets.

It had not ordinary teeth but fangs,

Really sharp fangs dripping this red stuff,

Which I assume was blood.

And it had really like spiky hair like a punk and a necklace of skulls and the whole thing looked just very,

Very scary.

And the whole thing was scary.

But I was wise enough about these visions to know that this,

The most important thing is the effective quality.

Because if you touch all the details,

You can mess around with them,

You can create them.

So straight away what I did,

Because I knew that I had power over the object,

Rather the object having power over me,

I did what I used to do as a school kid.

It was called doodling.

You take a picture and actually over its eyes you put these sunglasses like this pair of Ray-Bans.

So over its bulging eyes it looked like Elvis Presley sunglasses or Michael Jackson sunglasses on top of it.

Over its fangs,

I blacked a few fangs out like it needed to go to see a dentist.

And I put a straw hat over its spiky hair.

And just by choice,

I turned the sides of its mouth upwards so it was smiling.

And it looked the most ridiculous monster you could ever imagine.

Imagine a monster with Ray-Bans,

A straw hat and smiling with a few teeth missing.

And because of that,

The fearful aspect of that vision totally changed to humour.

And I laughed in my meditation and that vision disappeared and disappeared forever.

And I taught that technique once to this fellow,

I always remember this too,

Who came to me at Bodhinyana monastery.

He'd been staying there meditating and he was getting a bit sort of scared because he was washing the paving bricks out by the kitchen-dining room building.

And out of every paving brick came out this monster at him.

And I told him what to do with it.

And he reported back one day later,

He had a wonderful day,

It was so much fun playing with the monsters.

And after a while it just disappeared and vanished.

It was basically,

No,

I call it like you're humiliating the monsters.

And after a while they just don't want to be humiliated anymore,

They disappear.

They're not real monsters,

They're just creation of the mind.

So it's learning how to deal with these things.

And the most important part of this psychology is to notice it's what you add to it.

That is the most important part of these visions.

If you are afraid,

You add fear and whatever you see becomes a bit scary.

And if you add fun to it,

Because I'm a very playful monk,

Well you add play to that vision and it becomes very playful and humorous.

If you've got a very peaceful,

Happy mind,

What you actually see becomes peaceful and happy,

Becomes a beautiful vision.

And that is why I encourage people if they do start to see those beautiful visions,

No matter what it is,

It does not matter,

Enjoy it.

If you're having fun,

Carry on.

If you're afraid,

Turn it around to something humorous.

Whatever it is,

Turn it into something pleasant.

It's not that hard to do with your mental world.

Number one,

It really just shows you in life just how much what you add to life really affects its tone.

No matter what experience you're having,

You can change any painful experience to be an interesting one.

Just really what you add to things.

That is the insight which it gives you.

And number two,

For those of you who have been meditating a long time,

When some of these visions come up,

You will think,

Oh,

What's going on?

And I say,

Look,

You've been meditating for such a long time and sometimes you have to deal with aching knees and bad backs and the winds wandering around thinking about this or falling asleep and now you're having something interesting.

Enjoy it.

You deserve it.

You're having a good time.

What's wrong with having a good time in meditation?

I tell you what,

It's because Westerners in particular think anything religious must be hard work.

If it's no pain,

No gain,

They said,

That might be in other religions but not Buddhism.

Here we say no fun,

No enlightenment.

So the fun part of it is really important,

Essential.

So if you're having a good time,

Carry on.

Now to take that thing,

After a while it will just fall away simply because the mind just loses its energy.

You can enjoy it.

Don't take it seriously.

Don't think this is an omen if you see things happening.

If you see numbers,

Do not buy that lottery ticket.

It will not win.

This is just the mind just creating things but the important thing is how it creates the effective quality.

That is what's telling me that you're doing a good thing because it's peaceful and it's happy.

If you try and control these things and interfere with them,

What you get loses the effective quality of peace and happiness.

So number two,

You're sitting back enjoying it.

Don't get involved and try and control things.

As soon as you try and control things,

It always goes wrong.

What I've taught you for many years here,

The reason why people do get peaceful states of mind,

They get interesting states of mind is because they've let go.

They've let go of the controller.

The mind is settling down,

It's getting peaceful and still states of mind,

These things happen.

It's nature,

The nature of a mind which gets very still.

So don't spoil it by interfering.

Your job is to stand back,

Be confident that because of what I've said,

What other teachers would say is perfectly safe,

Stand back,

Enjoy it,

Let it be and just go for the ride.

Unfortunately it doesn't usually last that long but if it's lasting long for you,

Great,

Have fun.

If you want to take it deeper,

What you need to do,

And the trick is you look at one part of that image in your mind.

It is a tiny bit of control,

I must admit,

But it's not trying to control the details,

It's like focusing.

An example of that is,

I can't actually avoid own experiences.

It's like a beautiful landscape which is very delightful when you get to these stages of meditation because the light is coming from within,

It's what you add to the picture.

And seeing a delightful landscape and then just focusing on one of the trees,

A leaf on the tree,

A little dew drop,

Just because there's always something which sparkles.

You go for the most beautiful part of that vision.

Focus on one single detail.

And for me that time was just a little dew drop sparkling on the edge of one leaf on this vision.

And of course once you focus on something that bright,

That does turn into those real samadhi nimittas I talk about in the deep meditations.

A little sparkle and then that light just becomes all you see in your mind.

The point being you're getting into nice deep meditation,

You're seeing vision,

Your mind is powerful,

You've let go of your body but the mind is still a bit too complicated.

That's why instead of seeing a single thing,

You're seeing this complicated image of houses or people or rocks and streams and trees and stuff like that.

It's good but it's complicated.

So to simplify,

Focus on one aspect of that.

If you focus on one aspect,

The most beautiful leaf,

The most beautiful blade of grass,

The most beautiful part of that blade of grass,

Then that simplification,

That focusing,

Soon gets you into this beautiful simple nimittas,

One single light in the mind.

And from that you get far more power and from that you can go into the deep meditations called the jhanas.

It's getting the nimitta.

So to sum up,

If you do get into some nice peaceful states of mind and you get these visions coming up,

Just notice is it pleasant,

Is it unpleasant,

Is it fearful,

What is the effective quality,

That is most important.

If it's a peaceful beautiful vision,

Just enjoy it.

If you really want to take it further after you've enjoyed it long enough,

Focus on the most beautiful part of that,

Just like something which is sparkling somewhere that will be the big nimitta which comes up and will take you into the deepest states of meditation with more happiness and more peace.

If it's a fearful one,

Just play around with it.

You can find you can do that pretty simply but change the effective tone,

Play with it.

And that way will never be a vision or an image which causes you any problems.

It's part of the territory of meditation and it's an enjoyable part,

One you can look forward to and have a good time with.

Okay,

So that's that part of the meditation.

Is there any questions from people here before we carry on?

Okay,

So I'm sure there will be questions from the internet later on but now we can actually do some meditation.

Who knows,

You may see something interesting this afternoon.

Hopefully it will be good fun,

Won't it,

Instead of this boring old mind seeing something really beautiful.

Anyway,

Let's give it a try.

Get yourself comfortable again,

If you're not already comfortable.

Bring your attention onto your body just to care for your own body.

It takes at least a minute or two to develop awareness on the body.

Just like that simile of walking out from a lit room into the darkness.

It takes a while before your eye can adjust to the more subtle light.

It takes a while for the brain to be able to feel more subtle feelings in the body.

As you begin to experience those subtle feelings,

Don't be so passive that you just endure a painful feeling.

If your body is not properly adjusted and you want to fidget,

Please do so.

To be able to adjust the body by moving,

By scratching,

By coughing,

By sneezing at the beginning is important.

It shows that you are not trying to control the body by bearing with it,

That you are in harmony with your body,

Listening to it,

Being a friend,

Cooperating with the body.

The body says cough,

Then cough.

There is no right to restrain those natural forces.

You are developing the attitude of a partnership with the body,

A partnership of equals.

Don't think of yourself as the master or mistress of your body.

Don't treat it like a slave.

Treat it as a friend.

As a master or mistress towards a slave,

You finally abuse your body.

It's a partnership,

You work together in harmony.

Your body is healthy.

If there are feelings in the body deep inside,

Headaches or pains,

Which you cannot deal with by scratching or moving,

Then there is the way of being mindful of that irritation and adding kindness to that feeling,

To that part of the body.

Mindfulness together with compassion or kindness is parts of the body.

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Having on relaxing the body,

Don't let it go yet.

These last few moments of relaxation of the body are crucial for your health and comfort.

When the body is well relaxed,

Only then can we let it go.

And having let go of the physical world,

We now deal with the mental world,

Especially the world of the past and the future,

Which we let go of,

We abandon.

Wherever you come from,

Whatever's happened to you,

It doesn't belong to you,

Belongs this other person from whom you've evolved.

Let it go.

You want peace,

You have to free the brain from the past so you can attend with 100% capacity to the present.

As for the future,

Now is where your future is being made.

This is the place,

The only place you can do anything for your future.

If you leave the past behind,

Untie that link,

That chain which binds you to your past.

What's imagining that you're one of these trekkers up in the snow fields carrying around a heavy sled,

Just untie the buckle which connects you to that sled and sending your whole past so you're free from that great burden,

The weight of your history.

In meditation you can soar free from all of your past,

Not defined,

Not imprisoned,

Not hindered by where you've come from,

Without looking forward to the future,

Knowing that the best you can possibly do for the future is by caring for this moment.

You should deal with the mental world by coming right into this moment and letting go of the two biggest burdens which hinder success in meditation.

The interest in the past and the anxiety about the future.

Let both of them go.

What you're left with,

Care about.

Care for this moment with a great friend,

Being in peace and insight and joy.

Care for this moment and it will stay with you.

Thank you.

You you you you you you you you you you you you you you being in the moment,

Being content to be here,

Learning all the problems you have to solve in the future,

You can't leave them until later,

You deserve peace,

You deserve a rest.

See if you can notice the silence,

The space between the thoughts,

When you know without giving anything a name,

Without talking to yourself inside your mind.

Just know.

You you you you you you you If you want to watch your breathing,

Just know the breath as it comes in and goes out.

Watching the breath as a friend.

You you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you It's very close to the end of the meditation now.

How do you feel?

How relaxed is the body?

How free is your mind?

This is where we can experience through just sheer knowing the effect of our meditation.

It gives us feedback so we can gain the insight of knowing what works and what doesn't in our path of meditation.

It also gives us the insight of the experience that is called peace of mind.

No longer theory but direct experience.

That is where insight comes from.

Now I am going to ring the gong three times.

Please listen to every sound from the gong and let the third chime from the gong take you out from your meditation.

Very good.

Okay.

So I'm about to get out of your meditation.

If you'd like to move or scratch or cough,

I guess I was comfortable again.

As you know that these Saturday afternoon meditation sessions are streamed live over the world and we've got three questions here.

Firstly for our old friend,

Madhavabh Mehta,

We are hiring Swamankar on behalf of one of the members of the group who listen to this session every Saturday afternoon in Colombo,

Sri Lanka.

During my meditation practice I have felt tremors for some time.

When they last long my mind starts to wander and sometimes I feel other strangely bodied sensations too.

Is it normal?

The tremors of the body usually are the case of just energy balances in the body as I think I mentioned last week.

So usually it's something which you can accept as part of the meditation,

The territory of meditation,

Something which happens,

The body moves backwards and forwards without you telling it to.

The important thing is don't focus on it,

Don't make that the center of your attention.

The simile which might help is the simile of the TV set.

When you look at the TV set,

When you first turn it on,

You may be able to see the photograph on top of the TV set,

The papers underneath the TV set.

You will certainly be aware of the frame of the TV set but after a while because you focus in the center of the TV,

Whatever is above below to the left and the right disappears from your field of vision.

And all you are left with is the center of the TV screen.

You are not even aware of the boundaries of the TV screen,

The frame.

In the same way that as long as you keep focusing on say the breath,

Your main meditation object,

You keep that in the center,

Any tremors in the body,

Any other movement,

Because they are on the edge,

Soon you focus inside and those tremors,

You are not aware of them anymore.

Because you are not aware of them anymore,

They will just vanish by themselves.

The very fact they are lasting along means you are focusing on them,

They are becoming the main object of your meditation,

They are too close to the center of your screen in this simile which is why they last.

So see if you can just focus on the breath.

If you are watching me now,

The breath is in the center,

Those tremors are over here somewhere,

They are on the edge,

They are not central to you.

Because they are not central to you because you are not giving them importance.

They don't take the center screen,

Soon they will vanish by themselves.

And it is true,

Your mind has started to wander because the tremors are taking you away from the breath or whatever else is your meditation object.

And you have gone on to the body and the body feels a bit weird.

Leave the body alone,

Just go back to the breath.

Now we have two questions from Romania.

First of all,

When going on retreat or meditation for long times,

Every day a constant dull pain arises everywhere in the legs from top to bottom.

I can endure the pain and sit through but the last 15 to 20 minutes are painful and my body builds out stress and tension.

What to do?

Do more sessions but shorter with less pain and alternate sitting walking often or sit through the pain for long periods.

There is another alternative which was not mentioned which is when the pain comes up,

Then move.

No need to get up and start walking meditation,

Just keeping your eyes closed,

Just rearrange the legs so that the pain is fluorescent.

And even though that does break up the continuity of your attention on your meditation object,

It breaks it up but just for maybe 30,

40 seconds the time it takes you to mindfully,

Carefully move your legs.

And then when you close your eyes again,

The pain has vanished.

Yes,

You have lost a little bit of momentum but you soon regain it in the next two or three minutes.

And you can continue on after those two or three minutes of regaining where you left off and go far deeper.

So the idea that in meditation you have to sit absolutely still and you can't move,

Maybe that is what you have to do in places like Guantanamo Bay but meditation retreats are not torture chambers.

So if you feel like moving,

Move for goodness sake.

The idea of sitting through pain and just ensuring is something I am not sure where that has come from in Buddhism but that is not compassionate,

That doesn't seem right and it also does not work.

So please when it does get a bit too much to bear,

You need to notice how much is just you are being restless and you just want to scratch for scratching sake.

You just want to move because you are restless.

You know what is real and what is just the imaginary stuff.

So if it really is going to cause you a problem,

Then move,

Readjust your posture.

If that doesn't work,

Like many people here,

We sit on chairs,

On stools,

There is all sorts of meditation technology has arisen because of the need and so people are designing chairs and stools and cushions especially for meditation.

And if anyone wants to start a business in Australia,

The meditation is growing,

Growing,

Growing,

You can start to design or rather create designer meditation chairs or cushions.

A little chair we can press a button and it can lower the back or rise the back depending on how much you want which can fluff up the cushion for you.

Even a little button so you can make a cup of coffee during the meditation without going up and have a drink and then carry on with watching the breath.

There is no end of possible decides for your meditation cushions.

Even an alarm bell to call the monk just in case you are having a bit of trouble.

And also the personal air conditioner as well so it keeps it nice and quiet.

So you can rearrange the posture,

The main thing is just rearrange it.

And lastly,

Our apologies,

This is another one from Romania.

I read a story about how to catch a monkey with peanuts because monkeys don't let go of peanuts.

It's a letting go,

It's a story from Stories of Tea and by Venbal Huay Can.

Huay Can is the lady,

The nun who lives down here in Perth in Victoria Park.

Monkeys don't let go of many things.

I mentioned the story about how you catch a monkey with a banana in my story about Buddhists and bananas which is one of my famous talks.

I give many interesting talks like Buddhism and Coffins which is a really rip-roaring talk,

You'll find that on the web and also Buddhism and Bananas.

And the one about,

People didn't realise this,

How spiritual bananas could be.

But the one about the monkeys and bananas,

You get a coconut,

You eat the inside of the coconut,

Leave a small little hole just big enough for a monkey to put its paw in and you chain the coconut to a tree,

You leave a banana in the coconut.

The monkey finds the banana in the coconut because the hole is just big enough to put its paw in but not big enough to take its paw out with a banana in its grip.

So he can't get the banana out.

You put the paw in the coconut but when it's holding a banana,

The fist is bigger so it just can't get it out.

So the monkey tries all night trying to get the banana out and when the hunter comes,

The monkey sees the hunter coming and all the monkey needs to do to escape with its life and freedom is to let go of the banana and go and get its hand out easily if it lets go of the banana.

But the monkey will not let go of the banana because it's my banana.

Even though there's many other bananas in the forest,

No,

This is my banana and that's where the monkey gets caught.

Behind every attachment is this ownership,

It's my wife,

My husband,

My son,

My car,

My banana.

We don't know how to let them go.

It's not really letting go of peanuts,

It's letting go of the banana.

So I don't know about letting go of peanuts.

I know that peanuts is what you feed monkeys,

At the zoo anyway.

But I don't know,

Somebody peanuts,

I don't know how they do that.

But anyway,

Catching a monkey is usually done with a banana because a banana is much bigger.

So that's about learning how to let go of things.

You know that,

Because I go travelling a lot and try to spend a lot of time in aircraft,

They always tell you the emergency video of what to do if there's a crash or something.

And they always say,

If there's a crash,

Do not take your personal belongings with you.

But no one can do that.

They're just going to take just one little bag,

Just one little bag as they jump out of the aircraft and that's what kills everybody.

It's amazing that even in just situations where you have to run out of the burning house,

You always want to take something with you which is why you die.

That's why there was an old simile which I developed,

Is if you want to find out what you really attach to,

Imagine you're in a burning house,

What would you take out with you?

What would be the first thing that you would take out of the burning house?

That's what you're most attached to.

Then the second thing,

Then the third thing.

That's how you find out what you're really attached to.

You can understand just how those attachments cause you death or a lot of suffering.

So that's not just how to catch a monkey,

It's how to catch the little monkeys sitting in front of me and everywhere else.

So that's how we catch monkeys and it's amazing that here in meditation,

All we need to do is to let go of the past,

Let go of the future,

Let go of all of our things we have to do,

The problems we have to sort out in our life.

Did you manage to let go of all of that stuff and enjoy some nice meditation and be with the breath?

Or were you thinking of the job you have to do later on this afternoon?

Were you thinking of the trip you're going on soon?

Were you thinking of what happened this morning?

Were you a monkey who would not let go of your bananas?

Or were you a meditator who can become free?

Why can't we let go of those bananas?

Because it's my past,

It's my problems,

It's my future.

That's why we can't let go of things.

To our monks at monastery on Wednesday night I just developed the simile which I've given here of being a visitor,

Not an owner.

If ever you,

When you go back to your house this afternoon,

If you think that's my house,

You'll be very concerned about cleaning it and looking after it and making sure it's all spotless.

If you go into somebody else's house,

Do you really worry about cleaning their dishes?

Do you go to somebody else's house and say,

Oh,

Your carpet is vacuuming,

Where's your vacuum cleaner,

I'll do it.

You never do that in somebody else's house because you're a visitor,

Not an owner.

If you're an owner,

There's business to be done.

If you're a visitor,

It's not my business,

Somebody else's business.

So when you visit your mind in meditation,

Don't visit your mind as an owner,

There's something to be developed,

I've got to get peaceful,

I've got to get enlightened,

That means you're owning your meditation and it's always business to be done.

In meditation,

If you think of the past and future,

You're owning the past and future,

That's why there's business.

So when you meditate,

Like a visitor,

In other words,

I've got no business to be done,

If the dishes aren't clean,

That's good enough,

So leave them alone,

It's not my house,

I'm not going to mow the lawn for you when I go and visit you.

None of my business.

When it's none of my business,

You let go of all the bananas and you're free.

There's a nice little attitude that learn to be a visitor,

Not always an owner,

In your own house.

So one day we visit your house,

Don't own it,

Then you can leave it all alone,

It's not my business,

Somebody else will do the dishes later on,

Someone else will do the,

The owner is returning tomorrow,

I'm returning tomorrow but today I'm a visitor.

So just let it go and have fun and be peaceful.

That is the simile of the banana and the monkey.

The monkey owns the banana,

It's a problem,

It gets caught.

If you realise it's just visiting,

There's just so many other bananas in the forest,

Then it can be free.

Simple.

Any questions or comments?

Thank you from,

Actually they've got their names here,

Vikrametu Ihari in Sri Lanka on behalf of a group member,

Feislin from Romania and Voidnes from Romania.

A lot of followers in Romania.

Oh,

We've got two,

Three.

Okay,

Yeah,

First one,

Yes.

I just want to know if sutta class is on tomorrow.

The sutta class is on tomorrow and it's number 128 with Madhyamunika Ihara.

Sounds exciting.

Very exciting,

Very amazing sutta.

And I heard about the unfortunate news but I hope that you celebrate her life.

Well yeah,

That's my mother passed away.

Don't call her dying,

She got liberated from the old people's home.

That's good.

Very good,

Very good.

Okay,

Quick question here.

Okay,

Very good,

So you get there first.

When I'm watching each breath,

There's a very subtle feeling that I'm actually influencing it because I'm watching it.

There sometimes it's so deep it goes away completely but most of the time when I'm meditating it feels like that and I ended up kind of using the judgement of have I influenced or not as like the point of meditation almost.

Okay.

I'm not sure.

That's actually quite skillful because you're really looking at the most important part of meditation,

The way you react or relate to your meditation object.

I mentioned that before that that is actually where the,

You might call the pointy edge of meditation happens.

It's not so much what you're watching,

What you're observing but how you're watching it.

Am I influencing it?

Am I not influencing it?

Which is why the way to overcome that is all these amazing little skillful means.

One of the best is looking on your breath like a friend.

You don't influence friends,

You hang out with them.

But if it's your slave or your maid or something,

Then you can tell them what to do.

If it's your employee,

You can influence them,

You control them,

You own them.

So just letting the breath know,

Just be your equal,

Not your slave,

Not your inferior.

I call that making friends with the breath.

And then you find out with the attitude,

It's a very helpful way for me anyway not to influence my breath.

I can let it go.

And it's great you see that because it's the trouble with meditation,

With life,

Whatever we observe,

We interfere with,

Even what we know we tend to influence.

So how can we really know the truth?

We've bent it to suit us.

Just in the bare act of observation,

We've influenced the truth.

If you really want to see the bare truth,

You've got to just look at life without influencing it at all so you see what it truly is.

So well done,

That's a good attitude.

It's a principle in science too,

Isn't it?

It's the exact same principle.

Principle of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle,

Yes.

If you watch something,

You influence it.

Ajahn,

Just about those body trimmers that that person asked.

I've been listening to a little bit of A.

Kehmer lately and she was saying that sometimes the body sensation recommends doing body scanning but mixing it up.

So sometimes doing body scanning,

Sometimes doing absorption or concentration on the breath,

That sort of thing.

What is your view about the body scanning practice as a way of releasing pent-up tension or emotional tension within the body,

Particularly the approach that Goenka talks about with the body scanning up and down?

Body scanning technique is brilliant.

I've taught that many times myself.

It does really relax the body.

If you want to get into deep states of stillness,

You have to let go of the body.

So the body scanning is brilliant at the beginning of meditation.

It does get rid of a lot of physical tensions,

Emotional tensions at the same time.

If you want to get deeper,

Then you have to focus on something like the breath so that you can let go of the body totally.

That's the nice thing when the body vanishes.

One of the things that A.

Kehmer said is you can do the body scanning exactly what you said.

Then you get to a point where the body dissolves in energy or some part of the body dissolves in energy.

Then you forget about the scanning.

You focus on that energy like you say,

Focus on the breath and then you move from the breath,

The beautiful breath and the energy of the beautiful breath.

So it's kind of like I think the same thing.

Then she says begin to consolidate it.

I'm understanding that's almost like talking like you're talking about when you get energy.

You consolidate it down to a point of nimitta and bang into the jhana from that point.

Am I on the correct way?

No,

No,

That works.

That makes sense to me.

Okay,

Thank you.

Very good.

Okay,

So there we go,

A nice session today,

An extra 6 minutes but I won't be charging the Buddhist Society of West Australia overtime today.

That will be free.

So now we can pay respects to the Buddha,

Dhamma and the Sangha.

And again there is a sutta class tomorrow afternoon at 3pm.

Reviews

Loved the story of the monster. These talks and practices bring such peace and joy. Thank you. ☮💖🙏

Leandro,maybe you could tell us about your Journey as a monk. It would be só interesting.Perhaps you can recommend a place where we can know more about you.Thanks again:)