Day 348/365: 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.

In this session, Ajahn Brahm talks about the importance of relaxing during meditation practice.

Transcript

Very good.

So welcome everybody to enlightenment or your money back meditation session.

And as I have to say,

That for those who've come here for the very first time to learn meditation who come for what we call the introductory to meditation class,

That is not here.

It is next door.

So those of you who haven't done much meditation before,

Thomas,

You wanna get this done?

No.

It's because what happens every class you have to,

You know,

Whatever you're doing,

If it's just science or if it's like driving,

Basic driving skills,

Advanced driving skills,

Super driving skills.

So what we need to do is those people at the very beginning of meditation come to this class,

It's a bit too refined and also we sit for 45 minutes and if you did that to many people without their consent,

That was because of prolonged stress position,

That's what they're doing in Guantanamo Bay,

So we can't do that.

So those of you who've never really meditated much before,

Please to the room of my right.

And this is for the advanced,

The elite,

The 80 meditators,

Those who have meditated a lot before.

So at least you can be still for 45 minutes without any pain.

It's really important because last week I was,

I went over to Thailand to teach a retreat and even on the aircraft there sitting next to this guy and he said,

You know,

That,

Are you a monk?

I said,

How did you guess that?

It's amazing just how people must be my peace or my eyes or something,

I don't know why we recognize I was a monk.

And then he just asked me some questions about meditation cos he'd gone on one of these 9 day intense courses,

He said he never wanted to go back again,

Never wanted to do meditation again,

It was too harsh,

It was too painful,

Made it scary.

So this is one of the reasons why don't push yourself in meditation,

Don't force it,

Otherwise you get very tight,

Very tense and you don't get that beautiful stillness and relaxation and the depth in the meditation.

And what I teach here is the real tradition of meditation,

Just have to look in the books,

That when the Buddha began his journey,

He tried all those really forceful enlightenment or busts,

I'm going to just go and do this.

And then after 6 years he gave that up,

Got nowhere.

That's not the way,

So be careful.

That's one of the reasons why we have two classes here.

It's not that one is higher than the other,

But just everyone has to start somewhere,

You don't want to push yourself too much.

So those who want to come for the meditation,

The introduction to meditation class,

4 weeks,

That's next door,

Otherwise you come here too much and you won't come back again.

And you miss out on this beautiful journey of peace,

Stillness and also happiness.

Now one of the parts of the meditation,

I always talk about this when I do retreats,

But every now and again talk about it here.

Ah,

Very smart people,

Thank you so much.

So next door,

Great teacher,

It means you'll be coming back afterwards without suing the Buddhist Society for torture.

So the whole idea of peaceful,

Kind,

You're relaxing.

When you relax,

You find you don't have much to worry about,

To think about,

Not much actually to exert your mind over,

Which means that your mind can relax and rest.

It doesn't have to work so hard.

And each one of us,

The last few days,

I've been just working way too much,

But I know how to relax when it's time to relax.

So it means you are,

It's like the simile of,

Might even,

I'll say it here,

This little simile of relaxation,

De-stressing,

The simile of how,

When you hold a glass of water,

Many of you have seen this before,

But you see it again now because it works and it's a powerful illustration of what meditation is and why we do it gently.

If I hold a glass of water like this,

After one minute my arm becomes tired,

Two minutes I'm in pain,

Three minutes I'm in agony,

And I say,

A very stupid monk,

What should I do when it gets too heavy to hold comfortably?

You put it down and rest for a while.

If there's a glass of water like this,

You only rest for a minute,

Two minutes,

Three minutes,

When you pick it up again afterwards,

It actually does feel lighter.

I taught this so many times,

It's now on Harvard Business School,

They teach this,

This is what stress is all about.

You keep pushing,

Pushing,

Pushing until you get so tired,

Exhausted.

Not only is it painful,

But number two,

You don't become productive at all.

To get anything done you have to stress out,

Push,

And you just use so much energy.

It's called just the inefficient use of the human brain.

If you don't have to put things down for a while,

Then afterwards,

You feel good,

You feel happy,

Your brain is very alert once it has rested.

Trouble is,

We don't know how to put things down,

To let things go.

So this is what we do in life,

Holding,

Working hard,

Me too,

And this is what we do in meditation,

Put things down and relax.

So this is what we're learning here.

Sometimes people complain,

Well you can't do that all the time,

You've got responsibility,

You can't just sit there and do nothing,

Of course not,

But there is a time for sitting down,

Doing nothing,

And that time is Saturday afternoon,

3.

15 to 4 o'clock at this centre over here.

Still nothing time.

So it sounds easy,

Should be easy,

But people find such great difficulty because they're not used to learning how to let go.

So how do we do that?

First of all,

We have to sit comfortably.

We have to be able to sit comfortably.

So that's why for those coming for the Introduction to Meditation class,

The room in my left,

This is the ongoing class,

Otherwise you won't be comfortable,

You're not used to sitting still for such a long time.

So that when you learn to sit still for such a long time and you learn how to relax the body,

The body can sit there for a long time with no aches and no pains,

Which means it's not any problem,

Which means you don't have to even think about it.

It's one less thing to worry about,

One less thing to be concerned about.

So we have to relax the body first of all.

And the lovely thing about learning how to relax the body,

The same technique you use to relax the body is precisely the same technique you use to relax the mind.

So when you're relaxing the body,

It's beginning,

Training,

Generating that little attitude,

That technique by which the mind really becomes peaceful as well.

So how do you relax the body?

You relax the body by sitting up straight,

Come on,

Sit up straight everybody.

No talking,

No doing anything,

Any mobile phone comes up,

Goes off,

Then you get hit backwards and forwards.

Now that is not the Buddhist way,

Force,

Control,

Aggression.

That's not the Buddhist way at all.

Instead we learn how just to let things be,

Relax.

And you can feel if your body is relaxed.

Don't blame and say,

Oh my body is really tense,

I'm a bad monk,

Or I'm sleepy,

I'm a bad layperson,

Or whatever it is.

We don't judge these things,

We just know without comparing,

We just know my body is tense.

And how do we relax our body?

How do you relax your body is sometimes difficult for people to understand because they try and think about it,

Work it out rather than experience it,

To feel it.

So you can do a little exercise,

Tighten up your shoulders as much as you can,

Really get them really tight,

Now relax them.

What did you do?

You could do that so easily.

You just let go of all the pressure,

All the force,

All the holding you put down.

In this particular case,

The control of the shoulders,

You let them go into their natural easy position.

And you felt it relax.

So the mindfulness,

The awareness,

Gives you the feedback.

You actually see what's happening.

I do this and it gets really tense,

Do something else,

It gets loose and relaxed and you get to feel that,

To know it.

When you start doing that,

You become so aware of your body,

You can relax it very deeply.

An interesting part of it,

You can relax inside as well.

Places which you thought you had no control over at all,

Deep parts of your body,

Even your liver.

People say you're not supposed to be able to feel your liver.

If you've got some stones in there,

My goodness you can feel it.

Ah,

All the other parts of your body,

Relax,

Relax.

And you find everything just getting more at ease.

How this works,

I mean trying to find out similes to describe it to people,

You know it works,

But to convince people similes help.

You know so much aches,

Pains,

Irritations,

Because the body is really tight and tense,

It's inflamed.

And that's like what I was saying last night in my talk,

The guitar string pulls so tightly that it makes a sound.

Bing!

But that's because it's really tense.

If it's loose on both ends,

Really loose,

Then it doesn't make a sound at all.

It's relaxed.

They hear the sound,

It's the aches,

The pains,

The irritations.

A lot of them are due to because your body is really tight and tense.

If you can just relax,

Relax.

When things become loose,

It's hardly any feeling there at all,

Like the loose guitar string.

You learn how to let things be.

And you feel that,

You know,

I don't convince you with my simile,

But it really does convince you when you do that with your mind.

Your mind interacting on the body.

By which I mean,

Let it be,

Be kind,

Be gentle,

Put it down,

Stop holding these things,

It won't.

And you find it relaxes,

You feel that,

The body gets loose.

Number one,

When it does get loose,

It feels good.

You know when you're tense,

You're tired,

You ache,

But when you have a good rest,

This is really nice.

So you can re-energize yourself,

Reinvigorate yourself with a bit of meditation.

And the place I was teaching meditation last Saturday was in a five star resort hotel on Phuket beach.

But the spa was empty.

My students didn't need to go to the spa.

They had meditation instead,

Which was far cheaper and more effective.

Instead of lazing on the beach,

They were meditating in the hall.

Ah,

This is good.

Oh yes.

I don't know why people go into the ocean and splash about.

It's crazy.

Ocean is a place for fish,

Not human beings.

I don't know why they go by the pool.

What are you doing down the pool,

Sitting down there getting skin cancer?

What are you doing?

So instead,

Just meditating,

Relax to the max.

So you sit down there just meditating,

Relaxing your body.

And then,

When your body is really relaxed,

It feels comfortable,

It feels pleasant.

It's the pleasure of relaxation,

One of the hidden pleasures which people miss because they're always running around too much.

So,

When your body is relaxed and happy,

Then you do the same to your mind.

Relax your mind,

Stop striving to get somewhere.

That's pulling things again,

It's the same we do to our body.

We're just always trying to get somewhere,

Do something,

Get rid of stuff,

Instead of learning how to be here when we're meditating.

Allowing this moment to be because what we're creating is a peaceful mind.

And you don't create peace by making war,

By being aggressive or being violent.

That just makes more anger,

More tension,

Especially in your mind.

We get peaceful in the mind by letting things go.

So,

One of the first things we have to let go of is the past and the future.

These are our two torturers.

Just like in a prison,

There are two guards who will never let you sit still.

One of them is the past.

Come on,

Think about me,

Don't forget me.

You know what happened earlier on this morning.

You know what Ajahn Brahm said last week,

His joke,

What he said a few minutes ago about jokes about blondes.

You know what he said about,

I shouldn't say that because I always have a look around before I tell a joke just in case.

There's always somebody you offend if you tell a joke.

So anyway,

I won't tell that joke,

I had to look around.

So,

What do you,

Why do you people get offended?

That means something which is gone already,

Even a second ago.

Let it go,

Put it down,

Relax.

Why do you burden your mind with that?

The future,

Let it go,

Put it down,

Relax.

You deserve some freedom.

People go to these resorts to get away from it all.

Yeah,

They get away from the work,

The bothering law,

Whatever else you're trying to get away from,

Your boss at work,

But the past and the future.

You don't get away from that by travelling overseas.

You carry that with you.

That's cabin baggage inside the cabin,

Inside between your ears.

And so that,

To let that go,

So wonderful to be free of the past and the future,

Just to be quiet.

When I was in Singapore a few weeks ago,

I gave a little talk on dementia.

There was a doctor and myself,

The religious part of it and the medical part of it,

And that's when the doctor gave a description of dementia or Alzheimer's disease,

Saying that you forget the past,

You can't even think about the future and you're socially isolated.

And I thought,

Uh-uh,

That's what I teach people to do every Saturday afternoon in meditation.

But that's voluntary,

You can come back again if you want.

But let go of the past and the future,

Just be.

So it takes a little effort,

Not really effort but wisdom to be able to do that.

Training like anything else,

The ability to let things go,

Just to be.

And then what happens,

Instead of striving,

Getting all the tense up,

You feel your mind becoming peaceful,

You become aware of the quality of calm inside your mind and also what causes that calm inside your mind.

For those of you who are out and out,

Devout,

Learned Buddhists,

Who know the suttas,

You may recognise that this is the third part of the Satipatthana Sutta,

Jitta,

To be aware of your mind,

Whether it's peaceful or agitated.

This is out and out traditional stuff,

The peace-omator,

The quality of your mind.

Are you agitated?

Are you peaceful?

And what causes it?

What causes your mind to become agitated?

What causes it to calm down?

You discover that.

I can tell you that.

Let go.

What does that mean?

That's what you discover for yourself.

And when you do,

Your mind gets very peaceful,

Really calm.

It's so delightful,

So free.

It really is a holy day,

A holiday for you,

Peaceful silence.

And you feel just like the delight of the body,

The delight in the peaceful mind.

Nothing surpasses that,

In my experience.

Beautiful,

Deep,

Peace,

Delectable.

So this is not the path of pain,

It's the path of happiness and bliss.

Upon bliss,

Wah,

Upon bliss,

Wah,

I can take more of this.

That is how I know if people's meditating well.

Not but how still emotionless they are.

The guards in Buckingham Palace can stand motionless.

I look for your body language,

The smile on your face,

The happiness which exudes like rays of gorgeous light.

That is what happens when you understand this meditation.

Wah,

I want more of this.

So see if we can go to that stage of meditation which I call wah,

This afternoon.

Hee,

Hee,

Hee.

Okay,

So enough of that,

Let's actually do something.

Or rather,

Stop doing stuff.

So,

Here we go,

Tally ho.

Sitting down,

Closing your eyes and coming home.

By home,

I mean right here in your body and mind.

With your eyes closed,

You have more capacity in your brain to be aware of your body,

More opportunity to be aware.

And you'll find when I first close my eyes,

I'm sort of aware of my body.

When I stay up with my body,

I become more aware of it.

Start to notice little feelings here,

Little feelings there which I don't notice when I'm too busy.

So I can feel my body.

And starting,

I usually be methodical with my body awareness.

Starting off with my legs.

I notice I don't always put my legs in the same place.

Some days I use a cushion,

Today I don't.

It feels good,

Okay?

My legs sometimes are this way,

Sometimes that way.

What I do every time is experience them.

Experience the feelings in my legs which are the indicator whether I've got my legs in the right position or not.

And I know from painful experience if I don't get it right to begin with,

It's painful later on.

So I'm just out of kindness to myself.

As well as having less problems later on,

I'm aware of my legs,

Moving to the best position and then relaxing.

I only wear my legs,

They feel okay now,

It's the best I can do.

Do I move up my body to the next part which is the bottom?

Sometimes people don't spend any time or pass over their butt too quickly.

We have the English expression of pain in the butt,

It's not just an expression for no reason.

Sometimes the butts are very painful.

You don't get them right to begin with.

So you're aware,

Mindful of the feeling in your bottom.

Round,

Adjust until you find the best position.

Wearing robes,

Sometimes the robe folds and you get cutting into your bottom,

Into your flesh.

So I always make sure that that's not going to happen.

And once my bottom feels the best you can get it,

Move up to my back.

Huge area,

The back,

The torso.

But in particular,

Many people have back pain.

So you find out how to hold your back today.

It doesn't always have to be straight up,

You can lean back if you want.

You find the best posture for you.

I was saying to someone a couple of days ago,

Sometimes I put my back in one position and then very aware the back straightens up by itself.

I didn't do it.

So sometimes your back will change because it wants to,

It decides.

It's weird because you don't say anything and your back moves.

And I relax my shoulders.

Actually my shoulders are a bit sore,

They do need some attention.

Just loosen up my robe.

The shoulders are nice and relaxed.

Mindfulness and kindness,

That's what it is.

Being aware,

Being kind.

And then my arms and my hips and my hands.

And there's something which people call mudras,

The positions of your fingers and your hands.

Ah,

It's just tradition,

It's not that important.

What is important is how you feel.

How do your fingers feel and your hands,

Your arms.

And this is the sort of position you can maintain for 45 minutes without needing to fidget.

You soon find the best position.

And you check your head,

Upon your shoulders.

A lot of neck pain is because the head is not correctly balanced.

With the face relaxed,

Loose,

Nothing to be scared of.

People are putting too much effort in,

You can see that in their face,

Clenching their teeth,

Striving,

That's written all over their face.

When they're relaxed,

You can see that on their face too.

Muscles around the eyes all relaxed and loose.

The mouth loose,

Relaxed.

And it feels good.

Be mindfully aware of my body for the last 5 or 2 minutes.

Relaxing it,

Looking after it,

Caring for it.

And now it feels good.

Not perfect,

But really good posture.

Mostly because he knows he's been cared for,

Looked after,

Not abused or exploited.

And then I just go to one more level of body awareness,

Something internal.

The most irritating part of your body.

I just look at that,

Focus on it.

I keep saying zooming in on it.

That's what people understand by the word focusing.

Zooming in and as soon as I'm aware of it,

It's like you do have some control over it.

You can manipulate it,

You experiment,

Trial and error.

What makes that imitation worse?

What makes it better?

You feel it and you learn.

Same way little babies learn how to walk.

How we learned most things in life,

Trial and error.

But now we're focusing just on maybe some inner part of your body which is aching or in pain.

And we're learning again.

Mindfulness gives you feedback.

You learn how to relax inner parts of your own body.

Department.

Once that part of the body is in fear of making progress,

By which I mean the irritation of the ache is getting less,

You also find your body is becoming more delightful.

This is resting,

Relaxing,

And a body which is not tense is not only a healthy body,

It's a delightful body to be with.

Enjoy the delight of a relaxed body,

Deep relaxation.

So I say it's why people pay a lot of money to go to a spa,

To get this very feeling you can get when you're skilled at meditation,

With awareness and the ability to let go.

When you relax the body enough,

Then we do the same with our mind,

The peace on it,

How agitated is your mind,

How relaxed is it?

If you react to life,

To what I said or what the crow said,

Where the crow goes again,

If you react with negativity,

Your whole mind tenses up,

You just let it be.

Like my teacher said,

It's not the sound that disturbs you,

It's you who disturb the sound.

You're not a victim,

You can do something,

But just let it be.

Be kind.

Then you find your peace-ometer,

That part of your mind which tells you how agitated or how relaxed you are.

You know how to move that peace-ometer closer and closer to peace,

Further and further away from agitation.

Same thing which you did with the body,

You relax your mind.

Every time you try and do something,

Every time you start to wonder,

I shouldn't be doing this,

I should be doing that,

You finally get agitated again.

So we learn first by trial and error,

Then we realize this is a skill we develop.

Mindfulness giving us feedback.

So we learn how to relax the mind so deeply,

That even feels delightful like a relaxed body.

You may notice that after a while of just relaxing,

That your breath starts to come up into your mind.

But some of you,

Instead of the breath coming up,

Your mind starts to drift and wander.

So it is a time now,

Just to be aware of your breathing.

Right now,

Are you breathing or not breathing out?

Which one is it?

It's not telling the breath what to do,

It's knowing it.

Doing something to be aware of,

Sort of stops us from wandering off or getting too dull.

Focus on your breath.

Zoom in on it.

And to help,

Breathing in peace,

Without let go.

Imagine peace,

Health,

Energy.

Imagine it coming up into your mind with the in-breath.

The in-breath by being like a lorry or a truck or a boat,

Just furrying peace from outside into your heart and taking away all the waste products.

Let go the waste products of your thought,

Of your life,

Things which you should be keeping.

All leaving with your out-breath,

Breathing in peace without let go.

It's not telling the breath what to do,

It's knowing it.

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It's getting close to the end of the meditation now.

How do you feel?

How relaxed?

How peaceful are you?

And why?

What was the cause of peace?

What was the cause of agitation?

Meditation is a training.

You learn the skills.

We are going to end the gong three times.

So,

For the last waking of the gong,

Open your eyes.

There we go.

Okay,

That was nice and peaceful,

Relaxing.

So you got any questions from overseas?

Yeah,

Okay.

Let's see what we have here.

There you go.

From USA,

Sri Lanka and Germany.

Ajahn,

What is your thoughts on the common stereotype that meditation is a means of numbing ourselves from strong emotions and inducing a state of denial?

I've had some of the strongest emotions in meditation.

Those are peace,

Bliss,

Love.

So it is taking away some of the negative emotions.

So the fear,

The anxiety,

The grief,

The anger,

Those ones are the ones which get numbed.

Not through force,

But through wisdom.

Not from denial,

Which is the opposite of mindfulness.

It's learning about them and then especially learning how to let them go.

Not denying their existence.

But what happens is,

As those negative emotions,

The ones which causes so much suffering,

Disappear.

Then we learn how to encourage the positive ones.

Things like inspirations,

Even like peace is an emotion.

So we feel peace and we develop it.

And especially the bliss,

The joy,

The happiness.

So it was interesting to see enlightened monks when I was young,

People like Ajahn Chah.

He wasn't without emotions.

He just didn't have those negative ones like anger or fear or guilt.

He had his beautiful,

Bubbly,

Happy,

Peaceful emotions.

So,

The stereotype meditation encourages those emotions that should be encouraged.

Just things like love and kindness,

Forgiveness.

Those emotions get strengthened and strengthened.

And the negative ones which cause all the problems in the world,

They are the ones which disappear.

From Sri Lanka,

How to attain immaterial attainment through meditation.

Okay,

These are all based on what's called the fourth jhana.

It's a technical,

For those of you who don't understand a word of what I'm saying,

In the book,

Mindfulness,

Bliss and Beyond,

Happiness through Meditation,

I just explain that in great detail.

And that is what's called immaterial attainments.

Very deep stages of stillness.

And when you get still,

Things vanish.

The brain is only wired to notice things which move.

Which is one of the reasons why when you close your eyes when you meditate,

First thing you see is the inside of your eyelids.

But it doesn't move,

It's still,

So it vanishes.

So you don't even know you're watching the eyelids.

In fact,

Sense has just turned off.

Just like the default position in the computer,

If you don't click the mouse,

Do something,

It turns off by itself.

So this is stillness leading to things vanishing.

Five senses vanish,

Not just seeing,

Hearing,

Smelling,

Tasting,

Touching,

So you can't feel your body anymore.

It's gone,

You can't hear.

Someone bangs the door,

You don't hear it.

Nice little anecdote,

Just comes to my mind.

The story of this little novice monk who was there with Ajahn Chah when I was a little novice,

You know,

If you've been to Thailand,

Been to Asia,

Sometimes these about seven,

Eight year olds,

They sometimes join the monastery,

Sometimes it's because their parents can't look after them.

Sometimes these other tragedies happen.

So it's,

You know,

In all Buddhist countries,

The monastery gives them food,

Good education and a little bit of training as well.

So there's a little novice,

Might be about eight or nine years of age at Ajahn Chah's monastery.

One day Ajahn Chah was giving a long talk,

I mean really long,

Three,

Four hours and sometimes they're very boring.

And this poor little novice,

I need to go to sleep.

You know,

Not these like grown-ups,

You know,

Maybe they can endure this,

But when is Ajahn Chah going to stop?

When is he going to stop?

And you probably experienced this,

It's like the old vinyl record,

You get into a rut,

Repeating the same thought over and over and over and over and over again.

When is he going to stop?

When is he going to stop?

When is he going to stop?

And then what we have is like,

What insight is,

Is just seeing things in a slightly different way.

So his little insight was changing that monotonous,

Repetitive,

When am I going to stop,

When is he going to stop,

Into when am I going to stop?

And he stopped.

This little eight or nine year old novice stopped.

And when he opened his eyes again,

All the monks had left hours ago.

It was dawn,

He just had his first little blissful meditation.

And when people finish,

Especially in traditional Buddhist monasteries in Northeast Thailand,

They all bow,

They do a little bit of chanting,

And then they make a noise as they go out,

He didn't hear anything.

Just one happy little novice monk,

Blissing out,

Couldn't feel his body,

Couldn't hear any sound.

That is typical of getting into what we call the jhana states.

Five senses totally vanish,

Can't feel,

Hear anything.

Now,

Because it's still,

More things vanish.

This is the vanishing experiences.

So still,

More and more things disappear,

More and more things disappear,

Until the absolute state of stillness is what we call the fourth jhana,

Pure mindfulness.

Mindfulness doesn't get any more pure than in that fourth jhana.

If you don't know what I'm talking about,

You're really interested,

Because people like stuff they don't even know anything about,

They just like hearing about it because it's weird.

But anyway,

Very still,

So it can't stay like that,

More things disappear.

So from the fourth jhana,

Perceptions disappear.

There's perceptions which make up your mind.

So your mind starts to fall apart,

Disappear.

You literally lose your mind,

Which for many people think is a bad thing,

But actually it's a good thing.

It's not your mind anyway,

It's just the mind.

And it stops,

Little by little,

Those are the immaterial,

The ability to let go so much,

Even let go of your mind.

Oh,

That's deep stuff,

That's really cool.

Anyway,

A more down-to-earth question from Germany,

I am an expert in procrastination.

Very often I wish to be able to just get up and do things but can't muster the discipline.

Do you have any advice on the matter?

Yeah,

Just put off procrastination until tomorrow and do what you need to do first.

That's a silly jack.

I'm a great procrastinator but I haven't got around to it yet,

To procrastinating.

So sometimes it's just,

You feel,

Just being lazy and important,

You've got something to do,

But you don't want to do it.

Why?

Find out causes and effects.

Well actually it's not really procrastination which you're doing.

Sometimes it might be just fear.

Fear of,

I've got to make that email,

I've got to have that meeting but I don't really want to do it.

I really should go to the dentist,

I'll put it off until another day.

So sometimes it's fear,

Makes you procrastinate.

So procrastination is a symptom,

It's not the cause.

So find out if it really is fear.

Could be fear of rejection,

Fear of failure,

Fear of being told off,

Because they don't want to do it.

Please do it.

So when we understand what fear is and how to overcome fear,

Much of what we call procrastination just doesn't sort of happen for us.

But there's a time when we do procrastinate,

The positive procrastination.

If you know what I'm talking about,

If you don't know,

Sorry,

Look at that story which I keep repeating about that fellow school teacher,

When I was a school teacher,

Much older than I,

Who was in the British Army during the Second World War,

In Burma,

Surrounded by the enemy,

Heavily outnumbered,

About to die.

And his officer told him to go sit down,

Have a cup of tea.

How can you have a cup of tea when you're surrounded by the enemy about to die?

Surely we should fight.

If he'd have thought he'd have been killed,

He wouldn't have lived to tell the tale.

He had to sit down and procrastinate.

One of the best ways to procrastinate is just have a cup of tea.

And then they hadn't finished their tea,

Scout came back,

The enemy has moved,

Now there's something to be done.

And they did it,

They escaped through.

There's an opening in the surrounding forces,

A way out.

That is the wisdom of procrastination.

Really,

The wise action is when there's something to do,

Give it everything you've got.

When there's nothing to do,

Do nothing.

Obvious.

But how many people have got the courage to sit there and do nothing?

Be still,

Don't think out strategies,

Don't worry what's going to happen.

Just sit there and relax and have a cup of tea,

Just before you're about to die.

And then you find out things change,

You don't die anyway.

So that is the skill of procrastination when there's nothing to do.

It's not procrastination,

It's not putting off,

It's doing something very effective,

Very skillful,

Nothing.

People don't know how to do nothing anymore.

Crazy people.

Feel guilty if you're not doing something.

Come on,

There's so much to be done in the world,

There's so many problems,

Come on,

Do something.

Ah,

Later.

So procrastination should be encouraged when it's wise and compassionate procrastination.

But when it's time to do something,

Give it everything you've got.

That means you start to build up your energies,

You've got your energies,

You're not wasting them.

So many people get tired,

They get depressed,

They get negative,

They're just so tired.

They don't know how to relax and do nothing.

So anyway,

That's the discipline.

It takes a lot of discipline to do nothing at the right time,

At the right place.

So discipline yourselves.

Learn the art,

The skill,

The positive,

The positive action of doing absolutely nothing.

Give it a try,

Experiment,

Get some feedback.

Okay,

Any questions from the audience here?

Excellent.

You can put off your question until tomorrow.

Thank you for listening.

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