And beginning with attention to the breath.
Let your attention sink down from your mind to a few inches below your navel.
And this is something that you really want to use minimal effort.
Meditation in one way is about cultivating a sense of ease.
So as you attend to the breath,
Of course,
You're not trying to change it.
If there's a need for it to change,
You trust that it will change on its own.
And cultivating this state of ease is very different than how most of us are conditioned.
The values of society have so much to do with striving and struggling.
And there's a time and place to struggle.
And there are certain things that you'll only achieve through that struggle.
And also,
In some cases,
The opposite is true.
It's the other side of the blade.
Some things only come in the absence of striving.
So you're feeling that ease in yourself.
It's not lazy or sleepy or unfocused.
It's an easeful attentiveness.
A non-reactive attentiveness.
And attention that allows everything to be exactly as it is.
And so when thoughts come,
Whether a positive thought or a negative thought or a thought you have an opinion about or a thought you have no opinion about,
It's about finding the place in you that has the same reaction to all of them,
Which is basically no reaction at all.
And that just happens to be something the mind cannot do.
Which is why we put the attention in the body,
In the breath,
In something other than the mind.
It's sort of like if you ever have an issue with your hard drive on your computer,
Sometimes it can be fixed while the operating system is booted from that hard drive.
Some more superficial errors can be fixed that way.
But sometimes you have to boot from a different hard drive so that that other hard drive,
The problematic one,
Is separate from the space in which you're operating.
That's in one way what we're doing with the mind in meditation.
Many people will meditate from inside the mind and just like in the hard drive analogy,
There are certain things you can address that way,
But there are certain things you cannot.
So we're identifying with something other than the mind.
And the way you can experience this is by seeing how your thoughts come and go.
Sometimes there's one there,
Sometimes there's not.
Even if your mind is racing right now or any other time,
If you look really closely,
There's still a space between the thoughts.
It may be small,
But it's still there.
So you're sensing into that space.
What is that space?
What's it feel like?
How does it feel in your body?
When you get really still and listen to that space,
That silence,
How does it feel?
What is it?
You're sensing,
Bringing a curiosity to it.
And when a thought arises,
Isn't it true that that space is still there?
Can you sense the space,
The silence,
The stillness behind the thoughts?
You may sense that there's a kind of freedom there,
An expansiveness,
An openness.
And the more you practice meditation and the more you investigate,
The more you'll have the sense,
Sometimes even a deep realization,
That those thoughts that come and go,
Almost always you didn't think them.
And that you didn't decide to have a certain thought.
It just arises.
Yet when we say,
I'm thinking about,
Or I have the thought of,
It makes it sound like we created the thought,
We intended to have the thought.
And yet the vast majority of the time,
That isn't really true,
Is it?
The thoughts are as arbitrary as a bird call.
They come from your history,
Your experience,
Your conditioning,
But it's a mistake to think that they come from your choice.
You notice how the thoughts are related to you,
But they're not actually yours.
So this is an inquiry that you can spend many hours with,
This is just an introduction to it.
It points the way to who are you if you're not your thoughts,
Which is really the direction of all of this.
Those thoughts are only related to you,
The same way someone could walk up to you and talk about what you're wearing or what you're doing.
What they would say would be related to you,
But it wouldn't be you.
Yet when we talk to ourselves,
We tend to think that that's us.
And what if it's not?
Who are you if you're not those thoughts?
After all,
The thoughts come and go,
Sometimes there are no thoughts at all,
And yet whatever you are is still there.
And so the question,
Who are you if you're not your thoughts,
Is not for the mind to answer,
Because the mind will only give you thoughts about it.
Whatever it is that is between the thoughts,
That underlies the thoughts,
That's there,
Whether the thoughts are happening or not.
What if actually that's you?
That's a question not to answer with a thought,
But to sense into the body,
Sense into it,
Feel it.
This is something you can touch into at any part of your day.
Anytime you notice you're experiencing thoughts that don't really have a purpose,
Or if you chose to think about something for a while and then really don't need to anymore,
Yet the thoughts persist.
All you have to do is easily direct your attention to this question,
Who am I besides those thoughts?
Or what am I if I'm not those thoughts?
What is it that persists whether the thoughts are there or not?
That's something you can do as often as you like,
Whenever you like.
You may find it's a much more productive use of your attention than being those thoughts.
That's a question not to answer with a thought,
But to sense into it,
Feel it.
