Here I am again outside in nature recording.
It's a beautiful Sunday morning and I'm not going to edit this.
It's going to go straight onto the podcast that's alive.
So please embrace the inevitable noise,
Be it good or bad,
In your perception.
The beautiful birdsong.
There could be a rumble of a lorry.
It could be spoilt by the sound of aggressive calling from a crow.
But just embrace it all.
Embrace the sounds in your vicinity right now.
The senses can bring us great pleasure.
We become enraptured in beautiful sights,
Sounds,
Tastes,
Smells and the bliss of touch.
This is part of the gift of being human.
But is it the only gift,
The only route,
Or even the greatest route to peace,
Happiness?
Knowing that all things that arise also pass away,
We can be just as haunted by their transience as we can enamoured.
The loss of that which we love is the greatest pain a human has to bear.
So we look.
Is there a long-lasting happiness free from the curse of loss?
Yes,
There is.
Yes.
And is that to be found anywhere in the world via the senses?
Not really,
No.
And if you look deeply you'll see that.
You can touch that unshakable happiness now.
It lives within you and is who you really are.
It can be called many things.
True nature,
Buddha nature,
God.
Although the last one's quite complicated.
It's been complicated through the ages.
So it depends how you use that word or even if you use it at all.
So when we dive deep into meditation,
We find the sweetest and purest of all joys that builds and builds and never crumbles.
This is the promise of a deep spiritual path.
It builds and builds and never crumbles.
The body may fade away in this world but what we build in this way we build in eternity.
And when you find it,
Bring this gift out into the world.
Your world.
Let's just have a few minutes meditation together.
Opened up to sound.
The sounds where you are.
The sounds on this recording.
The beautiful bird who just sang for me then.
Take it all into the heart.
And I actually want this meditation to be about birdsong.
I call it bringing in the birdsong.
So come to stillness and breathe in and out of your heart.
Your heart center.
Connecting with that part of your body.
Right in the center of your chest.
And I'd like you to have a moment's gratitude that we actually have birds here on earth.
They look beautiful.
They sound beautiful.
They probably gave us the gift of flight.
Long ago we watched them in the air and mimicked them.
So gratitude to birds.
And then I want you to listen out for birdsong.
It's great if you can do this in nature but if not you can do it to the birdsong here.
And there she called right on cue.
So when you hear birdsong I want you to take that into your heart.
Isn't she wonderful?
It's as if I'm asking her to call and she does.
Again right on cue.
So take those sweet reverberations into your heart.
And just let them fill you with gratitude for the blessing that birds are.
And when you're ready you can open your eyes.
Please don't believe for one minute that that was in any way staged.
I would speak about birds in the meditation and there she goes again.
It's as if she knows and she's responding.
So I hope that was useful.
