Hello,
I'm Silas Day and today we will be engaging in a short Samatha or Shamatha meditation practice.
To begin our practice,
We assume a comfortable stationary position,
Whether it's seated,
Laying,
Standing,
Or sitting in a chair,
And simply relax into it for a short while.
Not going anywhere,
Not moving on our own,
But also not trying to be a perfect statue in stillness,
Simply letting go of all of our concerns and movements for the duration of this short practice.
Let's take a minute to take some deep breaths and find this place of stillness.
You As our body begins to settle down,
We establish a constructive motivation.
One part of it is our highest spiritual aspiration,
Such as awakening to liberation or healing,
And another part of it could just be concentration.
Making our way down the path and experiencing this moment as fully or singularly as we can.
Turning towards our aspiration,
We expand to include the happiness and well-being of all beings.
Another part of our motivation could be the task at hand,
The practical goal such as developing our attention skills,
Or bringing a sense of deep relaxation to our weary and tired body.
It doesn't have to be something deeply spiritual,
It can be deeply practical and immediate.
Whether we are doing this practice with our eyes open or our eyes closed,
We take our focus as a singular point.
We allow it to become rested.
If your eyes are open or if your eyes are closed,
The best way to tell if you are focused on your object of meditation is by the movement of your eyes.
Still eyes can mean a still mind.
Check in with them.
We hold a lot of pressure in our eyes.
If you find them jutting around everywhere,
The mind is often filled with thoughts,
Fancies,
And imaginations.
The body can be engaged in that movement too.
But if we find our eyes to be still peering at the darkness of the back of our eyelids or at our meditation object,
Then we can know and we can check in.
If the mind wanders to something,
Just notice it.
Don't judge yourself,
Don't judge your practice because this is the practice of meditation.
This is the practice of shamatha and concentration.
Training the mind to stay on one single thing,
Bringing it back over and over again,
And relaxing into whatever is happening while sticking with your meditation object.
You shift,
Relaxing into our meditation.
Our entire field of experiences arising and falling,
Our thoughts coming and going,
Sounds,
Sensations,
Feelings,
All of these things an aspect of this single taste,
This single moment of now.
Not something other,
Not something that gets in the way,
But something that is equally a part of our concentration.
It arises and then it falls,
Allowing our attention to become finer and finer on whatever we are focusing on.
You you you you mindfully attending to our object to our senses simply relaxing deeper into the focus and observation paying attention to the ebb and the flow of our breath and the head and the flow of our focus using our breath to consume our restlessness and at the same time bring in a certain clarity and vividness of attention coming back to the breath every time we get distracted relaxing releasing seeing a distraction as a distraction and returning non-judgmental knowing that this is just an aspect of the path refreshing our awareness with each breath noticing our dullness perhaps our laxity knowing that every time we release distractions or refresh our awareness towards our singular meditation object we are cultivating greater attentional balance and knowing that subliminally this attention is a source of joy in practice the remainder of the practice will be in silence at the end you will hear a chime thank you for sitting with me today you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
