Hanging Out

Hanging Out is a talk about the attitude towards meditation that we hold and how that informs the quality and depth of our practice. Too often we try to force a practice or make it into something "If I do this thing I get this result"

Transcript

So I would say that my meditation practice has been improving over the past couple weeks,

In part because I'm teaching so much and I'm forced to keep thinking about it and meditating and then thinking about it and meditating and listening to things and thinking and meditating.

But I feel for whatever reason,

Like specifically this group has really been super supportive in that and I think because we're more,

A lot of people here are longer time meditators or just that this group has been going on for a little while,

There's like a different energy in here than say my class that's just like a six-week class and I have never seen most people before and I won't see them again afterwards,

That there's a different kind of vibe here as well.

But what kind of started me off was when I remembered that one of my teachers,

Aachen Brahm,

Had pointed out to me that when I was meditating earlier in my monastic career,

I was trying to meditate,

Right?

So I wanted meditation,

I wanted peace.

I thought if I scrunched up my face and kind of pushed myself to feel the breath flowing in and out of my nostrils,

If I pushed myself hard enough,

Somehow I'd like pop through onto the other side of like peace or something,

Right?

Like somehow,

If I could just force myself to feel that breath coming in out of my nose,

I'll feel good.

I'll get peaceful at the other end.

And I was getting more and more stressed out and distracted and frustrated because it wasn't working,

It wasn't working like that.

And Aachen Brahm just said,

Well,

Why don't you just throw the meditation out the window and just be here?

He said,

Then just throw out the window,

Just relax,

Just sit quietly,

You know,

During this retreat.

Don't try to meditate,

Just sit here.

And I remember,

You know,

Sitting there and my mind kept trying to get me to do something.

But I just sat and sat and sat and it was,

And it started to work,

That I started to just drop and become more present.

And on Sunday,

So we had our mini retreat here.

And then the next day,

One of my friends,

He was a monk from Plum Village,

Which is Thich Nhat Hanh's community in France.

He was visiting and he gave a little workshop in Harvard,

It's like a meditation group they have there.

And I practiced with him,

And it was like a two hour workshop.

And his way of talking about meditation was very much in line with where I've been getting myself and what other teachers have told me.

But he said he doesn't even use the word meditation anymore,

Because people have such a,

It's almost like the word meditation is baggage now for people.

You know,

It's this thing that you have and you're trying to do,

And everyone's talking about like meditation.

But it's creating like a weird relationship,

Similar to what I was saying when I was in the monastery,

That it's like if I sit here and I can do this thing called meditation,

Then at the end,

It's like if I eat food,

I become full,

Right?

If I drink water,

Then I'm not thirsty anymore.

And if I meditate,

Then I'll become peaceful.

So it's like this activity to do to get a result called like peace or calm or relaxation.

But what's missing in that understanding is that the way to meditate is a process of inactivity.

It's a process of presence.

You know,

We say of letting go,

Right?

You,

By not trying to get some thing or somewhere else,

You will get something,

Right?

You do get peace,

But you don't get peace by trying to get peaceful.

You get peace by allowing it,

By letting go of the non-peaceful elements in your minds,

In your heart,

By letting things come to a stillness.

That even in the Buddhist texts,

There is no word called meditation.

The Buddha never once said the word meditation.

He spoke about mindfulness,

But it's actually this word sati.

That's the Pali word,

And sati actually means to remember.

So the way that he's talked about mindfulness,

The actual word from the Buddha,

It's to like remember this moment,

Right?

Or to remember the thing that you're looking at.

The opposite of ADD in that sense,

Right?

It's like we want to just be everywhere at once.

And it's,

You know,

If I'm mindful of the seltzer bottle,

I look at it,

And then again and again and again,

I'm remembering that this is the thing that I'm looking at.

So he said it's like an archer shooting an arrow at a target,

And you keep hitting the target again and again and again with the arrow.

That's like what mindfulness is.

It's like you just keep remembering,

So in each new moment you're coming back again and again,

And you're contacting this thing.

And when he talked about mindfully breathing,

That's kind of it.

It's like you're just remembering the breath,

Right?

So it's actually the word remembrance.

You're just,

It's the faculty of mind of memory that I'm remembering,

I'm breathing.

But the word meditation itself,

There's nothing there.

That's called meditation.

There's something that says absorption,

Which is like when the mind absorbs,

It kind of collects into itself.

There's that word.

There's this word that they sometimes like bhava,

Which means like to become,

Like kind of blooming into another state.

But the actual word meditation,

Like the way that we have it,

As it's like a thing,

It doesn't exist like that.

It's a complete construction.

We've constructed it lately,

Over time.

That if we sat down in this room and we threw away that word and we never even heard it,

And we just said,

You know,

This is our time to sit quietly together,

There would be no problems.

Because even if your mind was busy,

You wouldn't think that it's not supposed to be busy.

You would just say,

Oh,

My mind was busier today.

And that would be it.

But because we have this thing called meditation,

And you sit here and your mind is busy,

You think,

Oh,

I'm not meditating because my mind is busy,

Or I should be meditating or meditate,

You know.

But what is meditation?

What are we even talking about?

What is meditation?

If I really ask you,

What is meditation?

You might have some like general thoughts or principles about it.

But it would all kind of be,

It would kind of fall apart easily.

When I teach educators retreats,

I ask what,

What is meditation?

And I hear,

Yeah,

Peace and calm and this and that and focus and concentration.

But what is it?

What are we really talking about?

What's,

You know,

Those are all qualities or pieces of things.

But what is this?

What is actual like,

This is the bottle,

This is my phone,

This is a chair.

What is meditation?

Like,

How do you get an actual handle on it?

And the reality is,

Is you can't.

And actually,

The more that you try to take meditation as an actual thing,

You're,

You're already failing at it,

You're already setting yourself up for failure.

Because you are trying to approach peacefulness through a middleman through an activity that you're doing.

But it's like,

You know,

Doing something to become peaceful.

It's kind of like they say,

You know,

Fighting for peace.

It's like,

You know,

You can't fight for peace,

You have to make peace.

And it's the same thing.

It's like you because and I actually thought deeply about the statement.

So like,

I've heard that,

You know,

Like,

You know,

You can't fight for peace.

And I was like,

Well,

Yes,

You can.

There's a lot of people that have like,

Over,

You know,

What was like World War Two about,

You know?

Yeah,

People fought for peace,

And it worked.

But then I thought,

Well,

Actually,

It only works when one side gives up.

Right?

That fighting for peace works when either the other side is dead,

Like gone,

Or they give up.

So actually,

The way that war creates peace is by creating a situation that one of the sides lets go.

Surrender,

Right?

So actually,

The war isn't the way it's that's like a tool that's used.

But the point is that the peace comes through the surrender at the end of the war.

So actually,

The way to peace is through surrender.

And how do we get people to surrender?

You could get them to surrender through war,

You get them to surrender through giving them a bunch of money.

You get them to surrender by giving them importance or something,

But there's a lot of ways to get to that point.

So when we look at it that way,

It also becomes a little bit clearer,

Like,

Yeah,

The way to find that peace,

That calm,

That relaxation,

That centeredness,

That balance,

That harmony that I'm looking for.

It's not through doing something,

But it's through,

And this is where it gets weird,

Right?

It's through actively doing nothing.

Right?

It gets really weird there.

It's like using that function of memory to remember the present moment,

Right?

It's almost like a paradox in that way.

Mindfulness means remembering the present moment.

There's like a paradox there because memory we always think is like the past,

But you're using that function in plugging the function of past into the present,

And that's how you stay here.

And simultaneously to actively do nothing,

It's that same thing.

It's like,

Huh?

And that's what a lot of us struggle with.

It's how do I do this thing?

And we often overshoot it.

We're either pushing too much,

We're either actively doing something,

Or we are passively doing something or passively doing nothing.

So like when I'm sitting at home,

You know,

Watching TV and hanging out,

I'm passively doing nothing,

Right?

I'm just there.

I'm letting my mind wander.

If I want a bag of chips,

I go up and grab the bag of chips.

If I want something,

I go get that thing.

I'm just passively just being,

I'm just being passive,

Just whatever,

Not doing anything.

Or I'm actively doing something.

I'm more trying to accomplish,

Or I go to the gym,

Or I'm writing something,

Or I'm working,

I'm being,

I'm actively.

But that weird middle place,

Or we're being passively active,

Which happens,

I think,

Like if you're ever daydreaming or you're maybe driving but thinking about something else,

So you're in a very passive way going through the motions.

We call it like living life on autopilot,

Right?

A lot of things throughout the day we do on autopilot.

How many of you remember brushing your teeth every day this week?

You know,

It's something that just kind of happens,

Right?

What's kind of,

Which is part of our routine,

We're just passively being active.

We don't really know what's going on.

But actively,

Actively not doing something,

Actively being passive,

Actively being inactive,

That's really interesting.

Because actively being inactive,

Although again,

It's like this weird paradox,

It's actually what listening is kind of made up of,

Right?

If somebody's talking,

You're actively just,

We call it holding space,

Right?

That all I'm doing is just I'm holding space.

There's nothing more than you're sharing and I'm just here and I'm just open and I'm receptive.

I'm actively just being present with you.

Yeah,

That's what a great listener is,

They're just actively present.

Yeah,

Meditation is the same thing,

This thing called meditation.

Yeah,

It's all that meditation is about.

It's about actively just being here.

It's active presence that you're almost making that choice.

You know,

Okay,

I'm sitting in this chair,

I'm choosing,

I'm choosing to embark on a path,

Right?

I'm choosing the path.

But the way that this path looks is to allow all activity to kind of sink down to the bottom.

The way that this path looks is to allow things to coalesce,

To come together.

That's why in the Buddhist texts,

They use the word absorption because the mind absorbs into itself.

Yeah,

The mind absorbs into itself that right now,

You're experiencing your body in this room and me talking and you see me and you hear me and then you have your thoughts about me as I'm talking or your feelings about things that I'm saying.

So your mind is kind of fragmented into feeling this,

Hearing this,

Seeing this,

Thinking,

Right?

Our mind is working in all of these different kind of components all at once,

Kind of overlaid on top of each other.

We call that our experience.

Sight,

Sound,

Feeling,

All the senses and thoughts,

Feelings,

All these senses overlaid onto each other,

Bouncing back and forth,

Back and forth.

Now I see,

Now I hear,

Now I think,

Now I see,

Now I feel,

Now I hear,

Now I see.

Bouncing back and forth,

Rapid succession.

When you meditate,

You close your eyes,

Suddenly you're closing off one of those places that the mind goes to.

Yeah,

Close your mouth,

Closing up another place.

We can say you're closing off your body,

You're sitting here motionless.

Yeah,

So suddenly you're closing down your senses.

One of the Buddhist texts that I had read,

I think this was written later,

But they said if you want to catch a,

Like a,

Like a mole,

Like a groundhog,

You cover up all of the possible exits except for one and then it'll,

And it has no choice but to go out that one exit and that's where you can grab it.

And it's like this feeling of I'm closing down all of these different places that my mind habitually wants to escape through.

My mind wants to be active,

Seeing things,

Feeling things,

Tasting,

Experiencing,

Talking,

Right?

And I close all that stuff down and then it's like,

Okay,

Well now I'm thinking and feeling and sensing,

Right?

So I try to break it down like that.

We're sensing our body and then we have emotional responses and thoughts.

So I'll break it between those things,

Right?

So we're kind of bouncing back and forth.

Maybe we hear something that we're bouncing back and forth and then slowly over time as we're just relaxing,

The feeling of the body disappears,

Right?

Then there's maybe more of just like a sense of relaxation,

Which is like a feat on emotion.

I would call that feeling relaxation and then there's the thoughts and then slowly like the thoughts are running and then they kind of calm and they're running and they calm,

They're running and they calm.

And it slowly keeps coming back to this place of just presence,

Of being here.

And the mind then suddenly kind of all collected into this one spot.

You know,

Whereas the mind before it's like it was in the eyes and in the ears and in the feelings and in this,

It all collects,

It absorbs,

Right?

It's getting sucked together,

Right?

You're sucking it all in.

So it's just kind of concentrating in one place.

It's coming together,

Yeah?

And then everything just kind of starts to fall away.

And when you get to that point that the mind is absorbed,

Then even the subtle aspects of the mind start getting worked out.

Yeah,

It's this fascinating process that even once your mind is really fully absorbed in your present,

Then even the whatever the most coarse,

Right?

Coarse or gross and subtle,

Like coarse.

Even the most,

The gross parts,

The coarser parts of your experience start fading away,

Fading away.

So it keeps getting more and more subtle,

More and more refined.

And the way that this process works,

It's by allowing it,

By just almost like listening,

Right?

It's just being actively passive,

By actively not doing anything,

By being present,

By feeling.

This monk from Plum Village,

He said,

You'll sit here and you close your eyes and you'll feel usually right away the things that are unpleasant,

Right?

If you have any pain,

If you have like a feeling in your belly or chest or something,

That's usually where the mind goes first.

And usually you want to run away right away because we feel that.

But he said,

Just sit with that,

Soften.

Then you feel the feelings around that.

Okay,

I have tension in my belly,

But just a little bit over to the side,

It feels okay,

And above my belly it feels okay.

And so actually,

You know,

I have this whole body and it feels mostly okay,

It's fine.

And thoughts will kind of come in and the things we haven't dealt with,

Or these memories or songs we're singing in our head or whatever.

And you're kind of just present with those a little bit and you say,

Okay,

Mind,

I see you too,

Right?

And then you just kind of slowly start just being here.

And he said,

So I don't use the word meditation,

He calls it,

I say it's being with myself in a contained sort of way.

This is worse,

Right?

So think about that,

What a difference that makes.

I'm not here meditating,

I'm here being with myself in a contained sort of way.

It takes all the pressure off.

Just being here.

I like now to use the word hanging out.

Yeah,

That's my way of talking about meditation.

I'm just hanging out with myself.

Yeah,

Easy.

There's that ease,

Like when you're sitting down on the couch with a good friend,

And you don't even need to talk because you just feel so comfortable with them.

You're just there,

Right?

Just that being.

Yeah,

That's all that meditation is.

But when you rest in that state for long enough,

It starts to intensify.

Things start to drop away and disappear because they're not interesting,

They're not active.

And,

You know,

If you've ever seen a play,

You know,

There's the stage with the lights.

And when it's time for the scene,

They'll wheel out like the backdrop and they'll wheel out the props and then the actors.

But if you kind of watch closely in between scenes,

Like usually close the curtain,

But oftentimes you can see,

Right,

Like the actors go and then there's the chairs and tables and then like the chairs are moved out.

And then the background is wheeled away.

And then there's just kind of this black empty space.

Yeah,

That when there's nothing happening,

When there's a scene change,

When there's no scene,

No story to be told,

Then the space just clears out.

And it's like that space in between thoughts,

That space in between breaths.

Yeah,

Just that space starts to take center stage.

There's that musician,

Was it Glass?

Was that his name?

Philip Glass.

And,

You know,

One of his songs,

And I don't remember exactly,

But it's called like,

You know,

23 minutes and 30 seconds or something like this.

And the song,

It's him sitting at a piano,

But he doesn't play it.

And it's just 23 minutes of silence.

Because music,

It's a combination of notes and silence.

If there's no silence,

There needs to be an end of a note and the beginning of an X note that,

You know,

And you clap,

Clap,

Clap,

Clap,

Clap,

Like we learned in elementary school,

Like pause,

Pause,

That actually the rest,

The pause,

It's a part of a musical composition,

The pauses.

There has to be a pause in between each note,

Each word,

Each movement.

And he said,

Well,

Why don't we make that pause,

Let that pause take center stage.

Let's just have 23 minutes of pause,

Rest,

Rest.

Just have that pause be the whole thing.

And he was an artist as well as a musician.

One of his other things was pushing a piano off a roof of the building and recording the sound it made,

You know.

But,

Um,

The expensive piece of art,

I hope it was a damaged piano.

But,

Um,

But it was really saying,

Yeah,

When there's,

When there's no notes to be played,

When there's no story to be told,

When,

You know,

When we just sit there and imagine what kind of meditation that is.

You're sitting at a piano and you have an audience full of people.

And then you just sit there and smile at the piano for 23 minutes.

Yeah.

And everybody's just so confused that I bet a lot of their minds just went blank on default,

Like,

Huh?

But that's kind of what happens inside of us is that we'll sit and we'll relax and,

And we let go.

Letting go means we just allow ourselves to be here.

If I,

If I let go of something,

You know,

We often think of letting go of something it like drops and crashes to the floor.

It doesn't necessarily work like that.

Sometimes if I'm holding on to something like this chair and I let go of the chair,

I'll realize,

Oh,

The chair stays with or without me.

I can now just be here because the chair,

I don't have to do anything.

Right?

So you'll sit here and maybe there'll be a pain in your leg and you'll,

Oh,

My pain in my leg or on my back or I have to do,

What my thoughts have to do.

And we're holding onto it,

Trying to figure out what to do with it.

What do I do with this discomfort?

What do I do with it?

How do I change it?

But if you can just let go of it,

It stays,

It's still there,

But now I'm not so occupied with it.

And then what happens is that when we're not occupied with something in our mind,

It naturally,

The stagehands come and they'll move it out of the way.

That's not in the scene anymore.

Yeah.

It's this weird thing in our brains or in our mind that if you're not paying attention right now,

Feel your shoes and,

You know,

Feel your feet.

That feeling,

That sensation has been there all along,

But we haven't been noticing it.

Why?

Because it wasn't important.

It's not part of the story right now.

We've been listening to Seth talk.

So the brain tunes out the things that are not important.

And we hijack that mechanism.

It tunes out the things that are not relevant to the story.

And when we sit here to be with ourselves in a contained kind of way,

We say,

Nothing is relevant.

There is no story.

This is my time just to hang out,

To just be,

To be passive,

To not do anything.

So everything starts getting moved out.

Everything starts fading into the background.

And as everything fades away,

All that's left is this mind that's just fully absorbed into itself because there's no pieces of it.

It's not fragmented.

It's now complete because there's nothing in it,

Nothing in the way.

Yeah.

And that's where we're heading with this.

That's kind of the direction.

So I'll leave the meditation today in a way that will also really understand what I mean,

Even on a deeper experiential way of using just this basic sense of,

Of beingness and presence to really drop in in a deeper kind of way.

This is very empowering because you can also be really angry.

You can be grieving.

You could have just made a big mistake or been in a car accident or something could be happening acutely right now in your life.

And this sort of meditation still works because no matter how things are,

You can just be with them.

You can always be with things as they are always.

No matter how bad it is,

You can still be with it.

And if you're with,

And if you allow yourself to be with anything in your mind,

It slowly starts to soften.

Yeah.

So no matter where you start,

They say start where you are.

No matter where you're starting from,

You can get there through this method.

So it's great.

So we'll sit in a way that feels comfortable,

Feet flat on the floor.

Reviews

Good way to visualize the act of meditating. Thank you.

Thank you Seth🙏you’ve made a few things more clear for me☺️

Thank you for this. Just what I needed to hear today. Thank you so much!,