Meditation Instructions

This talk was given to a group of adults at Andover High School in 2016. The talk is pointing out the correct way to meditate through talking about the correct understanding of meditation. Acknowledging the state of "being" that underlies all of our experience, and allowing the rest of the mind to sync up with it.

Transcript

So when engaging in a meditation practice, There's a couple secrets that I have. These are very special monk secrets, So you're not allowed to tell anybody else. Only for you guys. When we talk about meditation, We're talking about concentrating the mind, Right? Concentration. So concentrating the mind means, If you think about, Again, Science, What a concentration of a solution, A concentration of a substance means. It means there's a lot of it kind of densely brought together in an area. So if something's concentrated, It's kind of tightly gathered together, Right? Concentrated. There's a way to do concentration that's easy, That's natural, That's easeful. And there's a way to do concentration that's exhausting and that's difficult. If you look into your own experience, So right now as you're sitting here listening to me, You'll notice that, I guess we could say, In the background, Or kind of the most fundamental principle of your experience right now, Is that there's an awareness, Right? That there's a presence. That you're aware, You're here, Right? There's this kind of beingness about you. You know what I'm talking about when I say this? There's an awareness. You're a human being, Right? So it's the being part of the human. All that meditation is, Is starting to bring awareness. It's starting to bring that awareness to the foreground. Or said another way, It's starting to take everything that is getting in the way, That's clogging that awareness, And taking all that stuff and allowing it to fade away, To kind of disperse and to dissolve. And ultimately the goal, If you want to talk about a goal, Ultimately the goal is to get to a place where there's just kind of the sense of awareness. That there's just this kind of a peace and an awareness and spaciousness. Really just coming back to that awareness that's just residing in the present moment. Just kind of this place of awareness. And so, If you're sitting in meditation, And let's say. . . So for instance, I was sitting in meditation just now, And I had a cramp in my foot. True story, It just happened. So I was just sitting here, I had a cramp in my foot. Now, When I was a monk, I learned something really interesting. Is that, If your foot starts to cramp, And you don't do anything, It eventually goes away all by itself. But not before making you think your foot's about to explode. So as I just now, The meditation was sitting here, Right, I felt the cramp come, And I looked at the cramp and I said, Okay, Kill me, Go ahead. And it got worse and worse and worse, And. . . You know, I said, Oh, I guess I'll never be able to walk again. I guess my foot, That's it, Right? I'm done for. And the pain comes, And it gets really strong, And it kind of peaked. And then it kind of just faded off. And then I noticed that I'm sitting here, And I hear there's like a basketball game next door, So I hear kind of like some music coming from that. So my mind kind of went over there a little bit. And then again, It came back. And then I started having some thoughts. I started remembering something from earlier today. And again, My mind came back. And ultimately, All these different things keep arising into my awareness, Right? Thoughts, Feelings, Perceptions, Sensations, They keep arising into that field of awareness. And then they kind of just fade off by themselves. And then the next thing comes. And that fades off, And the next thing comes. And the more that you kind of, When I say practice meditation, I really mean the more that you kind of reside in that awareness, And you start getting aware of things coming and going, You also start to become aware of what is it that's not coming and going? What is that kind of space of awareness that's almost there, Present the whole time? One could say that your mind is like this room we're sitting in, Right? So imagine if you were in this room for 24 hours, Right? You'd see students come in, Students go out, Students come in, Students go out. The janitor come in, The janitor come out. Then we come in after school and meditate, Then we go out. Right? So all these things are coming in and out of the room. But the room, The space of the room, It's still just here. It's just sitting here. Just things coming in, Things going out. So that spaciousness, That awareness, That presence, That's always there. So you don't need to do anything to get there. Right? You already have it. You're already there. You are already aware. You're human beings. You've already, You've achieved the goal. Congratulations. You are beings. You did it. So all that we have to do is allow the things that are not part of our being, That are not involved with being, To slowly drop away. All the things that are pulling you out of the moment, All the things that are clogging that, Allowing those things to fade off. And that happens all by itself. The more that you just sit, The more things will come and go. But the more that you really just allow that to happen, So my teacher, Achin Brahm, He said it's like a non-stick frying pan. Does anybody have like a really nice non-stick frying pan at home? My mom just gave me one. It's awesome. Right? So when I cook an egg in my old frying pan, Right, You try to, If you break the yolk accidentally, Especially, Right, It's, Ah, And it's in there, And you're trying to get it off, And you have to kind of scrape it. Right? It's all stuck. But these non-stick pans, Right, No matter what's going on in that pan, You just turn it over, And everything just slides right out. The pan is clean. So it's really allowing our mind also to get to that state where our mind is just present, And it's just aware, And things are kind of coming, And they're going. But we allow it. Right? We don't make stories about it. So the problem comes is when, If something comes into that mind, And then we grab onto it, Right? A lot of people in the meditating, If thoughts start coming, And they say, Oh, God, I'm thinking. I shouldn't be thinking. I'm supposed to be meditating. Right? I hear that noise in the gymnasium. Oh, There's a song. Why are they playing a noise? Oh, It's so hard to concentrate. Or maybe you are like, Ooh, I love Beyonce. That's great. Or I have a pain. Oh, God, A pain. Oh, I can't sit. Meditation doesn't work. Oh, This pain, I have to. . . That a sense impression, A sensation comes in, And we grab it. We grab that sense. We hold it there. We make a story about it. And then we say, Oh, Meditation's hopeless. It doesn't work. Oh, I give up. So a lot of people, They've told me, They say, Oh, I teach meditation. They say, Oh, I can't meditate. And that's the funniest sentence for me to hear, When someone says, I can't meditate. It's too hard. I can't meditate. It's too hard. Because meditating is easy, Right? It's just being. The beingness that's there, That's your birthright. You are being. The hard part is the craziness that you're holding on to all these things in your mind, Right? The hard part is all the stress, All the discomfort, All the difficulty, All the complexity, All the complications that you're creating yourself. That's hard. That's exhausting, Actually. So the secret to meditation, This is, Again, That very special monk secret, Is that you don't have to do anything. In fact, With meditation, The less you do, The better. And it's counterintuitive. And I mean that because if I say that, Of course you're saying, Yeah, But, You know, But I've been doing nothing my whole life and it didn't work. Why? But it's not true. You've never been doing nothing. You're always doing something. And if you do nothing, You wait maybe five seconds, And then you kind of, Oh, Okay, Nothing's not working. So you have to be patient with the nothing. I like to say it's like waiting for a bus that's not coming, But being totally content with that. So it's like, And maybe the word is faith or trust or something. I'm not sure there's a better way to talk about it. Let's say it's trust, Right, Or faith. I like faith. It's uplifting. Right? I believe, Right? I believe that my mind is peaceful. And I believe that my mind will find that peace all by itself. Right? I believe. So you can just close your eyes and you can just believe. It'll happen. And you can just smile and sit there and wait. And what's amazing is that it will happen because the mind's not moving on its own. The mind's actually moving because you're moving it. This is something that as you get deeper into the practice, You'll see that everything that's arising in your mind, It's your own creation. What you're seeing in the mind, That's actually, That's your mirror, That's your echo. That if you feel discomfort, If you're trying to do something, If you're pushing yourself, If you're not satisfied, Thoughts, Things will start arising in the mind. I know when I was doing yoga, We were doing the tree pose, Right? So you're standing on one foot. Anybody here do yoga? No one? So we were doing tree pose where you stand, You know, You stand on one foot and you put the other foot up here on your thigh. You stand like that, Just on one foot. And my yoga teacher here was explaining this to me and he said, You know, If you look around and you see people that are kind of falling over, Because he also practices a lot of meditation, He said, You'll see that actually every time that person kind of almost falls, He says, That's a thought, Right? So he's like watching people and they're falling, Oh, Thought, Thought, Thought. Because the second that you start thinking, The second you kind of get into your mind, You lose your connection to your body and you start to wobble. And he was at the point where he was able to watch that every wobble was actually a thought in his mind. That when his mind was free of thoughts, The body was still. As soon as a thought would come up, It would wobble again. So I'd really give this to you guys as a really important tool for meditation. And that's the tool of trust, Of belief, Of surrender, Of letting go. Of not trying to get this thing called a peaceful mind, Of not trying to relax. Of not thinking there's something wrong with you if you somehow can't relax or you have pain or you're fidgeting around or your mind is going crazy or you're tired or whatever. That somehow meditation, You know, That works for the monks, But for us it doesn't work. That's ridiculous. Yeah, So really approach the practice. Really let go. Let go of any expectations, Of any hopes, Of any strategizing, Of any trying, Of any striving, Of any effort, Force, Willpower. Let that stuff go. And really just sit there, Smile, Relax, And just allow it. Allow it to come and allow it to happen at its own pace. And it's really, It's kind of like riding a bicycle in a weird way. In the sense that, You know, When you're looking at it from a distance, It doesn't really make sense. When you see, When you're a little kid and you watch someone else riding a bicycle, And you try to sit in the bicycle and it just kind of keeps falling over, You don't really get how that works. But eventually you just kind of start going. And, You know, This is also why I lead guided meditations, Is because I'm like the mommy who sets you up on the bicycle and gives you a little shot at it. Kind of bring you into that zone and try to leave you there a little bit. But eventually you'll get to that place where you feel kind of that balance. And then you'll be able to just sit there and relax and hold that balance yourself. And again, It's this beautiful combination between presence and relaxation, Presence and letting go. You'll be completely aware and awake and completely surrendered. And those two poles, These two poles create a place in the middle of total rest and peace that you just reside in. And that then just gets deeper and deeper and deeper and more and more intense. That rabbit hole goes really deep. It's pretty cool when you start to really get down. So, Yeah, I guess that's my suggestion for your next practice, Is to really just let go, Let things be. Let things take their own course. Let nature take its own course. And just really go along for the ride. Give up, Surrender, Just be there. Allow the mind to come to rest by itself. It's okay. Any questions? So the way that these classes usually work is we do a sitting meditation, A walking and then a sitting. So we'll now do the walking meditation. So I'll ask that all of you kind of push your things to the edges of the room. And we sit.