You Create Your World

This is a talk that leads into a guided meditation, covering many of the bases of Buddhist practice and the foundations of meditation with anecdotes and stories from Seth. Coming from a church basement in Acton, Massachusetts, this talk is in repsonse to questions from an advanced group of practitioners about meditation.

Transcript

So,

They say that there is no such thing as a stupid question.

There are only stupid people.

Talk over.

Okay,

So that actually all fits together.

So,

It's nice to be back in the church basement.

Does this count as humbling ourselves before Christ,

Would you say?

Jesus is up there and we're like.

.

.

It's just a bad joke.

You don't have to answer.

Actually,

So I was just talking.

.

.

She's the minister,

Right?

So,

I was just talking with the minister and I was saying that I really love how the image of Jesus that is up there,

It's Jesus holding the lamb,

Because it reminds me of the qualities of Jesus.

I mean,

And I was born Jewish,

But so is Jesus,

So it's okay.

The qualities of Jesus,

The caring and the compassion and the taking care,

Like the shepherd,

He's like the guardian,

And he's showing you the way and the gentleness of holding.

You know,

It reminds me of the Buddha very much as well,

Right?

Just what a real spiritual leader should be,

Someone who's there caring for the others,

Who's kind,

Who's showing the way,

Who's guarding them,

Protecting them.

So,

He's really beautiful qualities.

So,

When the Buddha spoke about the path towards enlightenment,

This path of growth or freedom,

Whatever words you want to use,

He said you can kind of coalesce it into three points,

And those three points are sila samadhi panya.

That's the Pali.

So,

Sila would be.

.

.

It's kind of like your.

.

.

It can be translated as virtue,

But it's also like your behaviors.

So,

For instance,

Like when I see Jesus in that image,

He has all of these virtuous qualities,

Right?

He's soft and he's kind.

That one would say from a Buddhist point of view,

He's really perfected his silas.

So,

The way that he lives his life,

His behavior,

It's beautiful.

It's non-violent,

Right?

It's loving,

It's compassionate,

It's caring.

It's positive,

This beautiful,

Intense positive energy,

This positive way of being harmonious,

Right?

Helpful,

Loving,

Inspiring,

Right?

These beautiful qualities.

So,

The Buddha said the first thing we need to do is to kind of be working on ourselves,

Right?

When I became a monk,

You know,

We had these rules like no killing,

No stealing,

No lying,

No drugs and alcohol.

There was rules that were given to us to no sexual kind of whatever,

Like intercourse or encounters or things,

But that also for lay people just means,

You know,

Having sexual relationships and integrity,

Right?

So,

Not cheating on a partner or finding a sexual partner who already has another partner or not misusing people sexually or anything.

So,

You know,

All of these trainings,

They're applicable to all of us.

They're really,

If I look at my life,

Can I really say that,

You know,

I'm not killing anything?

And it's like,

Well,

Yeah,

I can say that I'm not killing anything directly,

But,

You know,

Or do I step on those ants or do I kill those mosquitoes,

Right?

Am I,

You know,

What are the things that I'm buying and consuming,

Right?

Do I consume things that are killing things?

And the answer is most likely yes,

Because a lot of things these days,

Even when I eat tofu,

They deforested a big piece of jungle somewhere to plant those soy crops.

So,

Even eating tofu,

Maybe you're killing a thousand things when you're eating a beef,

You're just killing one thing.

So,

It's like,

Wow,

It's hard to even know where to turn these days,

To be honest,

Right?

Unless you have your own garden.

But you can really look for yourself,

You know,

And how much in integrity am I living with,

With respecting life,

Right?

With caring for others,

Respecting the livelihood of other beings.

And for me also with mosquitoes,

I don't kill mosquitoes.

I blow them off,

Yeah,

Or I kind of try to flick them off.

But I don't kill them because it's not that mosquitoes fault.

It was born a mosquito.

It was just born a mosquito and it has to drink blood to survive.

And that's its thing.

I don't want it to drink my blood so I can push it off,

But I don't feel like it's my right to kill it.

I actually had this once.

I was in the monastery and I got in the shower and I looked down and I had a tick on my leg.

And I got the tweezers and I just,

And I had this dilemma because I was like,

I don't want to kill this tick.

And I was talking to the tick and I'm like,

I don't want to kill you because I know you don't have a choice.

You're a being like me.

You were just born and this is how you have to survive.

But I don't want you in me and you could really cause me some disease,

But I want you to die.

And sometimes when you pull out ticks,

They lose their heads.

And I went through this whole,

I was really stressed.

So I just started talking to the tick and just saying like,

I'm sorry,

Like,

You know,

Please,

And calling the Buddha and all this.

And then I pulled it and it just came out really quickly and easily.

I was like,

Oh,

Thank God I threw it outside.

But really trying to perfect,

You know,

Being kind to other beings,

Right?

Just that kindness.

It starts purifying the heart.

You feel good about yourself.

You're surrounding yourself in love.

Your experience of the world becomes softer.

Yeah.

Then not stealing,

Right?

Not taking things that aren't given,

As we say as monks,

But also not stealing.

But really knowing that I'm in my integrity.

I'm a safe person to be around.

You can leave me around money that's not mine.

I'm not going to steal it.

You can let me in your house.

I'm not going to break anything or,

You know,

Take anything that I know that I'm a safe person.

I feel good about myself.

It allows me then,

Like when I meet people,

Then I feel comfortable with people right away.

The Buddha said that if somebody feels good within their Silas,

If you feel good within your virtues,

You can walk into like a group of thugs at night and you could be friends with them,

You know,

Because you're not holding back.

So you're not afraid of people anymore.

You're just friendly to everybody.

You're just open because you have nothing to hide.

So you also can just connect to people on a very basic level of friendship and kind of mutual respect and support.

Not lying,

Right?

And not lying,

It actually,

It's about mindful speech,

Which also goes into like not using harsh words,

Not gossiping,

Not just talking loads and loads and loads of nonsense that's not leading anywhere,

But really using our speech as a tool,

As a tool for building connection,

As a tool for support,

As a tool for understanding,

That just be mindful of what you're saying.

Are my words leading to harm and destruction?

Are my words hurting?

Yeah,

Sometimes if we feel like somebody hurt us,

We're going to say harmful words to them,

That we're going to use our words like daggers to hurt people back.

Instead of maybe using our words to say,

I feel hurt,

Right?

Instead of using our words to clarify where we're at,

To set a boundary,

Hey,

That hurt me.

I don't want that stop.

We use our words to hurt back.

Are you using your words to hurt others?

Yeah,

How are we using our words?

If I'm walking around using my words in a harmful way,

If I'm talking about people behind their backs,

I'm creating a lot of karma.

Yeah,

If I was in my other meditation group in Acton,

In the Tuesday night group,

And I said,

That stupid Wednesday night group,

Those guys don't know what the heck they're doing,

And then I came and sat down here,

I'd look at you all,

And I'd feel a little sheepish feeling.

I'd be like,

Hey everybody,

Because I'd know that I was just talking about you.

And then I'd have people come from the Tuesday group,

And I'm like,

Oh my God,

I hope they don't say anything to the Wednesday group.

That if you speak in a way,

You're creating karma,

Right?

And your conscience suffers.

You have a bad conscience afterwards,

Right?

And then you're afraid in your life,

Because you've done something.

You're afraid of that karma coming back to you.

Yeah,

And that's really what the Silas are about.

It's learning how to live in this world in a way that you're never afraid that your karma is going to come back to you,

Because you know that all the karma you're making is good karma.

You know that the way that you're living your life,

It's a good way.

I'm not afraid of anybody in my life.

I haven't wronged anybody.

I'm everybody's friend.

I do my best that even if people get mad at me or they accuse me of things,

They turn against me,

I can walk up to them and say,

Hey,

I love you and I'm here for you.

And I can,

In my full integrity,

Say I've never wanted to hurt you or tried to hurt you.

And if I did or said something,

I'm sorry,

But it wasn't my intent.

And I can stand in that.

And the more that we live our lives in a way that's congruent with our integrity,

With an ethical and moral integrity of our own,

You know for yourself exactly what's okay and not okay.

Yes,

This isn't like somebody standing over you,

Judging you,

Saying right and wrong,

Good and bad.

This is your own.

You know exactly.

If you're talking about somebody behind,

You know exactly it doesn't feel good.

If you kill something,

You're like,

Ha ha ha,

You know.

You know exactly that there's a part of you that's like,

You know,

Actually,

I probably shouldn't have done that.

If I steal something,

You know.

When I was a kid,

I used to steal things a lot,

Like steal street signs and things.

I thought that was funny.

So I had this whole collection of street signs in my bedroom.

Speaking of karma,

You know,

I had this FedEx sign that I stole.

And I was like,

If you hear this,

Anybody,

Don't tell the police.

There was this big FedEx sign.

And it was like this big canvas kind of,

Wow,

You know,

What a prize that was,

Right?

So I got this,

Jumped out of my car at night and got this big canvas FedEx sign.

It was like over this kind of like a plastic barrier that,

You know,

So it stood up.

It was almost like a little tent,

Right,

This FedEx sign.

I took it,

It was amazing,

And I brought it to college,

And I paraded it,

And I showed everybody,

And I sat inside of it sometimes.

It was really fun.

It was FedEx sign.

And then I came home,

And then my mom,

She's like,

Has her arms folded,

You know,

After college.

Has her arms folded and kind of staring at me.

And I'm like,

What?

She said,

You know what happened to me today?

I said,

What?

She's like,

I had an important package,

Got in my car,

Went to find FedEx,

Couldn't find it.

Because somebody had taken the sign a year ago and they never replaced it.

And I know that that sign is in your bedroom.

And because of that,

I wasted an hour of my day trying to find FedEx because there's no sign.

And I was like,

Wow,

That's karma.

I'm so sorry.

And I can only imagine how many other people can find FedEx.

I feel terrible.

I'd return it,

But the sign's gone.

I don't know what happened.

You know,

So we create karma through our actions,

Right?

So by practicing sila,

By practicing virtue,

By practicing living your life in a good way,

Just living your life in accordance with your own truth and the good truth and ethical and moral truth,

You start to feel good about yourself.

I am,

For my birthday,

Which is coming up next month,

I am,

You know,

Facebook's like,

Do you want to start a fundraiser for your birthday?

And I see that everyone else does that and it's really annoying.

But Facebook said,

I'll get,

Facebook said that they'll give one dollar to the fund for me.

And I go,

OK,

Facebook wants to give a dollar?

Sure.

So I scroll through the different fundraising or the charities,

I guess that's what they're called,

That they had.

And I eventually chose one called No Kid Hungry,

Because I was like,

I can get behind that.

Kids shouldn't be hungry.

You know,

It's pretty straightforward.

We feed kids that need food,

Easy.

And then I looked up their mission.

I read about them and I was like,

Oh,

You know,

That's a good thing.

And they said,

For every ten dollars,

We give about a hundred meals.

I was like,

Wow,

They must buy bulk.

I don't know,

If they go to like BJ's or something,

They must buy bulk.

But I said,

Ten dollars for a hundred meals.

I said,

You know,

Let's let's try to really do this.

And I and I made a fundraiser on my Facebook page and it said,

Oh,

Do you want to try to raise two hundred dollars?

I go,

No,

I want to try to raise ten thousand dollars.

And then I myself gave ten dollars to the fund.

It's like the first one I gave my own ten dollars in.

And I said,

This is going to give a hundred meals for kids.

And I was like,

Wow.

And I gave that ten dollars and it felt good.

It felt really good.

And I'm poor.

I'm like pretty I'm in debt.

I'm living with my mom.

I'm in debt.

But I was like,

That feels good.

I gave ten dollars.

Wow,

It feels really good.

And then I spent like an hour going through my Facebook friends and clicking to invite four thousand people one click at a time,

Because that's how you have to do it.

And it was exhausting.

But also the whole time I was like it's for us chanting mantras.

Right.

This is for the kids.

And and I started like a mini Facebook campaign on my page that will last for the next two weeks with the hashtag giving feels good.

Because I've realized,

Look,

Everybody has ten dollars.

Everybody has ten dollars.

And if that ten dollars can get a hundred meals for kids,

There is no reason that you cannot give your ten dollars to those kids.

So I'm up to like six hundred dollars or something on it by people giving ten dollars.

But giving feels good.

And it was so simple.

And I gave that felt good.

I was like,

Wow.

And after I gave,

I just felt this beautiful piece in my heart.

Man,

I miss that feeling when I was a monk.

I never got paid for being a monk.

I just served every day for eight years.

And it was so blissful because I could just work for the good of other people.

And I knew my needs would get provided for me.

It was amazing.

I was just floating on the cloud all the time.

Now that I'm working,

It's like even this when I'm like teaching meditation,

Like getting money to put in.

It's like a different feeling.

It doesn't feel as selfless as I'd want it to be.

It doesn't feel like service on the deepest level of my heart like I want it to be because like now I need money to survive.

And as a monk,

I couldn't.

I wish I won the lottery because it's like if I won the lottery,

I wouldn't just go screw off on an island somewhere and be like,

Bye,

Everybody.

I'd be able to just do the work I'm doing but not charge people,

Right?

Or rent amazing huge halls and invite everyone to come and be like,

Yeah,

I'm just going to pay for this.

Or whatever,

Then raise funds for other people.

So there's something about selfless service,

Just giving,

Doing things right out of the goodness of your heart for others where you get no benefit except that good feeling,

Which the Dalai Lama says that's called being wisely selfish.

Because you're doing something to make yourself feel good,

Right?

But there's a lot of things you could do that make you feel good and they're not good for you and they're not helping anybody.

So the Dalai Lama said,

Yeah,

Be selfish.

Do things that make you feel good,

But be wisely selfish.

Do things that also make others feel good.

Do things that bring goodness into the world.

Right.

So this is the Sila.

This is creating a life,

A lifestyle,

A pattern of behaviors that we start to feel good about ourselves.

We feel happy.

We feel uplifted in our daily lives.

Because once you feel happy and uplifted and you feel like you get more buoyant and inspired and warm and like floaty,

You're already halfway there when you try to meditate.

Your mind is already in a really nice place that I'm already sitting here smiling like,

I gave my $10 to those kids.

Those kids are going to have so many meals.

And I feel so good and I can just sit here and smile.

My mind's already super calm and peaceful.

Because Sila leads to Samadhi.

Samadhi,

It's meditative absorption,

Stillness of the mind.

The mind feels good through your behavior.

Because the mind feels good,

The mind wants to stay where it is.

The mind wants to even come in.

It wants to kind of like hug itself.

The mind collapses into itself.

It feels good to be here.

Ooh,

This feels good.

Oh,

This feels even better.

It collects deeply into this moment.

That's Samadhi.

When the mind collects into this moment,

When you're not thinking about a hundred different things and you're not all fragmented and scattered,

The mind is fully present,

The full focus,

The full awareness,

The full power of your mind,

All is assembled at once in front of you.

You're super aware,

Right?

You see so clearly everything is right there at once.

Your experience has unified.

And when everything unifies together,

Then you're really able to experience things fully.

You're able to see things fully,

To see things clearly,

To start to understand things because you're present enough to understand them.

Panya,

Wisdom,

Right?

So Sila Samadhi Panya.

So by behaving in a good way,

By living an uplifted,

Happy life,

By creating a happy mind through our behaviors,

Through our lifestyles,

The mind starts to come into itself and it feels good.

Samadhi,

Stillness,

Collection,

Absorption,

Meditation.

And through the collection of the mind,

Through the presence of the mind,

Through the assemblage of the mind,

The unification of it,

And it has its full cognitive powers,

Its full awareness,

Then whatever that mind looks at,

Whatever that mind takes as an object,

It understands that thing so much easier.

I mean,

That's why when you're in school,

They say concentrate,

Because if you want to learn,

Your mind has to be present.

You can't be sitting thinking about going home and playing video games with your friends in school and simultaneously be learning math.

Your mind only has space for one thing,

Right?

Either calculus or Fortnite,

You can't have both,

Right?

One or the other.

So when the mind is fully present,

Then it immediately starts to understand things.

Yeah,

And so the Buddha,

So this was it.

Sila Samadhi Panya.

This is just these three super easy things.

That's the path.

And that's how also like ethical behavior is connected to things like spiritual realization,

Right?

Because I know like,

You know,

We were talking about religion before,

Like we learned from like religions,

There's often that thou shalt not.

Like if you do the wrong thing,

You get sent to a bad place kind of thing.

You know,

If you misbehave,

You get judged and you go somewhere bad,

Right?

Or Santa doesn't come this year,

Right?

Or something.

And I was Jewish,

So we don't have a hell.

We don't have a Santa.

But we have Jewish moms who make us feel really guilty when we do bad things.

Everyone has something,

Right?

But it's like it comes from somewhere else.

It's like if you misbehave,

You something else,

Like,

You know,

You should feel guilty.

You will be judged that it's projected outside of you.

But the reality is,

Is that if you do something,

You don't need God to be watching you because you're watching you.

There's always somebody watching you and it's you.

Yeah,

God's there too,

But you're watching you.

Yeah.

And you know that there's no such thing as a crime without a witness because whoever committed that crime witnessed themselves doing it.

Yeah.

So you were always witnessing your own crimes.

Yeah.

And you were also witnessing your own beneficial and beautiful acts.

Yeah.

So it's it's really that,

You know,

This whole karma thing,

It's it's like this is your home and you can paint the walls with whatever colors you want.

You know,

And some of us unwittingly,

We we,

You know,

Splash like poop all over the walls,

You know,

Or we take our markers and we write hateful thoughts on the walls.

Like,

You're not good enough or nobody loves you.

And we scrawl this graffiti on the walls,

You know.

And then that's the environment that we live in,

That each one of us is like a terrarium or I don't know what like a biodome or I don't know what the word would be.

But each one of us is living in a very self-contained.

We interact,

But each one of you is the is the victim of your own crimes.

You're the witness to whatever is going on,

That if there's negative thoughts going on in your head,

You're the one that's listening to them.

If you're sitting there thinking bad thoughts about me,

You're the one that's listening to that,

Not me.

You know,

You're creating that in yourself and then you're the one that has to be subjected to being miserable,

To feeling miserable.

That's your karma.

By having negative thoughts,

You're going to feel miserable.

And that's the karma you're creating.

And if you feel miserable and you try to meditate,

It's not going to really work.

You might get insight into why you feel miserable.

Oh,

I feel miserable because I have these negative thoughts.

I should probably stop that.

Yeah.

So it all kind of works together.

But ultimately,

It's like,

You know,

We that's like what karma is about in Buddhism.

It's not this,

You know,

I'm like walking down the street.

I mean,

And it is this to potentially on a more metaphysical level,

Right?

Like a,

You know,

Car hits my car and they're like,

Oh,

That's karma.

And it's like,

I guess like I could have parked somewhere else.

Right.

And maybe in a past life,

I hit somebody else's car and they're like,

I have no idea.

Maybe.

But the more direct,

Clear understanding of karma,

It's just about cause and effect.

And that's really what the Buddha was all about.

Is he kind of talked to people and he's like,

Look,

Everything you do has an effect.

Oftentimes,

We're miserable with the effects we're getting,

But we don't realize that we keep feeding the same causes.

Yeah.

I remember like on the Simpsons once,

Like there was a science experiment that Lisa was doing the bar.

And she like electrified a cupcake and she was like,

Study of the stupid male adolescents.

And Bart's like,

Ooh,

A cupcake.

And he wants to touch it.

And he goes,

What a minute.

And he grabs against out.

And he's like,

Why you little?

And he grabs against out.

And you just keep hearing.

And the lights in the house,

I started flickering.

Yeah.

He just didn't learn.

He didn't learn that.

Yeah.

Stop grabbing that cupcake.

If you grab that cupcake,

It'll be painful.

You know,

That saying it's like being angry at somebody.

It's like holding a hot coal in your hand and expecting the other person to get burned.

Yeah.

It's like we,

Tony Robbins,

Same thing.

When I went to a thing,

He talked about this all the time.

How you are creating a life that you're not satisfied in,

But you don't realize that you're the one creating it.

I feel like the secret talks about this,

Too,

This whole that,

You know,

It's like if I feel so say that I'm looking for like a partnership,

Right?

Say that I'm like a single guy ready for partnership.

But in my mind,

I think.

But,

You know,

I'm not really like a great catch.

You know,

I'm actually I don't even know if like I'm really that lovable,

You know,

Because that's the messaging I got from my parents.

Right.

I'm not that lovable.

So I don't think I'm really that lovable.

So a little bit of like a worthlessness right or not good enough feeling,

Which is something that a lot of us carry around.

So I'm going to go out on the dating scene with this feeling of like I don't really deserve a good connection because I'm not really that great of a find and I'm not that great of a person.

So what kind of person am I going to attract?

Right.

Who who's going to come into that connection?

It's going to be somebody who is probably not going to treat me very well.

Right.

Somebody who will potentially cheat on cheat on me.

That's the word.

Why does it sound weird to say cheat on me?

Cheat on me.

So you cheat on me,

Right.

Or somebody that'll just not respect me.

Right.

And then in my world,

I'll get angry and I'll blame them.

They're a bad person.

But also inside,

I'll feel see.

I knew that I couldn't find love.

See,

I knew I'm not worth it.

Then we'd break up.

See,

I'm always alone.

Yeah.

And then I'd go through the cycle again.

Well,

Now go back to the bar and find the next partner.

Right.

With the same system in place.

What am I going to find?

So many people come to me and ask,

You know,

I'm like,

I'm here for spiritual advice.

And I like,

Why do I keep getting into the same kinds of relationships?

There you go.

Yeah.

You get what you believe you deserve.

You attract what you think you deserve.

You know,

If you don't think you deserve much,

You're going to get somebody who also thinks that you don't deserve much.

And this is the same with our jobs.

This is the same with our.

This is this is everything.

Right.

It's like your beliefs about yourself.

This is what you call in.

It's what you create.

That's your karma.

Right.

Cause and effect.

The effect of walking around all day saying that you're worthless is the world treats you like you're worthless.

And even if somebody comes and says to you like,

Hey,

You're a great guy,

You're a great friend.

Thanks for being there.

You're amazing.

You go,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

Thanks.

Yeah.

When you wouldn't come in,

But some random person drives by and honks at you,

Get out of the way.

And you get all mad because on some level you're like,

Yeah,

Because you're I know I'm worthless.

Thanks.

You know,

That you'll believe that honk from that stranger,

But you won't believe,

You know,

Your best friend telling you you're amazing.

Right.

So we we paint the walls of our experience of our of our inner terrarium with whatever colors we want.

And that's what we see.

And that's what we experience.

And it's really important that we start to take responsibility and ownership of that.

That on so many levels,

More than we're aware,

You know,

Again,

Tony Robinson,

He says the quality of your life,

It's the quality of the feelings that you experience.

Because you can have a million dollars and you could still be depressed and you could be poor and you could be happy.

Right.

So it's not money.

You could be famous.

You could be depressed.

You could be an amazing partnership.

You could be depressed.

Right.

So it's never the things it's the feelings connected to them.

So you can be in an amazing situation,

But you could have terrible feelings and then your life sucks because because you feel miserable.

So if it's all about feelings,

If feelings equate to happiness,

Then the question is,

Well,

How do we create happy feelings?

Right.

So it all kind of comes back to this.

It's like,

So if I want to create happy feelings,

What does that mean?

What does that look like?

You know,

Hundreds of different practices,

Practicing thankfulness,

Right,

Practicing contentment,

Practicing changing your belief system about things,

Starting to expect good things to happen.

You expect that you're worth different things.

Start changing the way you feel about yourself.

Start taking care of yourself.

Start appreciating and respecting other people.

Yeah,

There's so many ways to build ourself out of that.

Again,

That's the SILA,

Right?

That's the behaviors.

How do I live my life?

How do I interact with this world in a way that creates positive karma?

Right.

That's all that SILA is about.

How do I live my life in the way that I'm creating the most positive karma?

Positive karma means positive results.

Positive results means that all the things that I'm doing,

I'm just getting as much as possible good things coming back to me.

Yeah,

Of course,

It's not always going to be the case.

I walk around the street and I smile at people and people don't smile back.

Yeah.

So it's not like,

What the heck,

You know?

No,

You just,

You keep giving.

You just keep giving.

And then you'll get back when it's ready or what you can.

But if nothing else,

It's like,

Well,

At least I'm feeling happy.

Even if everyone else is making weird faces,

At least I'm happy.

It's nice for me to be here.

Even if you're all bored,

I'm happy to talk.

I like listening to myself talk,

Right?

Obviously.

Yeah.

I was at a concert yesterday and I walked past this group and I remember I smiled at them and they all just kind of stared at me.

I was like,

Okay.

I sat down.

It was intermission.

At intermission,

I got up,

I saw the same group,

I smiled at them and this time they smiled at me.

I was like,

Yeah,

Look at that.

Just took a second try.

Yeah,

It changes.

Who knows?

So really learning to take that active responsibility.

Again,

When I went to the monastery,

They did not start by saying sit and meditate for an hour.

They started by saying clean the floors.

Be on time to the meals.

Don't kill.

Don't lie.

Don't steal.

Yeah.

They started by really simple,

Basic things that on the spiritual path,

We always are trying to jump into the deeper teachings.

Yeah,

We want,

Give me the deep stuff.

I want to be floating out of here.

I want the enlightenment.

I want the psychic powers.

I want that deep meditation where everything dissolves and it's just this blight.

Give me the,

Give me the good stuff.

Yeah,

Of course.

That's what we want.

But the way to get there is not,

You can't,

Nobody just sits down and boom,

You know,

Unless you've been practicing seal already.

I had,

I taught meditation in,

You know,

I teach in schools.

I taught in a middle school in Germany.

A little meditation,

Just talked briefly and said,

Okay,

Close your eyes and breathe.

And afterwards I was like,

You know,

How was it?

And kids are like,

Oh,

Relaxing or,

Oh,

I fell asleep or whatever.

And this one girl was sitting in the front row.

She just looks up at me and I was like,

Oh,

Like,

How was it for you?

And she's like,

I was breathing and then my body disappeared and then my breath disappeared.

And then there was just this light and this peace.

And it was just simply peace.

And the state that this girl is describing when you see light,

When you experience light and peace,

That's called a Jhana Buddhism.

And that's one of the deepest states of meditative absorption.

See the Samadhi,

That's Samadhi.

When the mind is fully unified,

It,

There's an experience of light that comes up.

Maybe some of you have,

I don't know how deep you've gone,

But maybe you even start to,

After you've sat for a while,

Sometimes in your vision,

It's like when you've looked at a light and then you've closed your eyes and you get that afterglow.

Sometimes even sitting for a while,

You'll start to get a little bit of an afterglow thing.

That's the very beginning of it.

But actually that light gets intense.

It's amazing.

I've seen it a few times.

It's like someone's holding a flashlight to your face.

And everything else disappears.

It's just lights and then peace,

Like she said.

So this little,

I think she was a 12 year old girl,

First time ever even probably hearing the word meditation.

But because obviously her mind must have been so pure,

She must have just been such a good,

Kind,

Sweet person,

A pure,

Uncluttered,

Uncomplicated mind,

That when I gave her the most basic instructions for meditation,

She reached the deepest,

One of the deepest states of meditation,

That monks go to the jungle for 30 years and meditate 12 hours a day and do not reach.

Ten minutes in her middle school classroom while she was 12.

Yeah.

And that's karma at work right there.

That's karma at work.

And one of my fortune cookies once said,

It's like no matter how long you've gone down the wrong path,

You can always kind of turn back.

And it's never too late to decide to reclaim your life,

To decide to reclaim your mind,

To decide to start to shift things and do things differently.

Yeah,

You always have that choice.

Start small.

Yeah.

Take any one of those precepts.

Start saying like,

I'm not going to kill things.

I'm not going to lie.

I'm going to be mindful of my speech moving forward.

Right.

I'm going to respect people's possessions.

I don't know.

Find whatever it is.

Find little things you could do in your life.

How can I start making little practical adjustments to the way that I'm living my life to be happier,

To live more harmoniously,

To create better feelings,

Give more,

Smile more,

Just do things that feel good,

That you feel good,

Uplifted,

Create a good feeling for your life.

And then when you sit to meditate,

You'll feel that meditation is already better.

Right.

And the mind wants to be there.

And that feeling of goodness,

That becomes your object of meditation.

You'll feel good and you just let yourself feel good.

Forget the breath.

Right.

Forget breathing.

Forget the mantras.

Forget staring at a candle.

You'll sit there and you'll feel good and you just and you allow that feeling of goodness just to draw the mind in.

Yeah.

The feeling of goodness,

The feeling of virtue,

Virtuousness.

We could probably do that actually for the meditation if you wanted.

You could already think,

Think about your own life.

What's something that you've done that you're super proud of?

Something that,

But like in a,

In a,

In a kind of like a more of like a selfless or like in a beauty.

What have you done for some,

You know,

Not like,

You know,

I won this.

I was the fastest kid in my high school.

Maybe that works.

I don't know.

But find something in your life that you've done that,

That you feel good about,

You know,

And something that feels good.

Right.

So not just something that you know is good,

But what creates an emotional response?

So even if you feed homeless people every day,

But like this one time you fed like a cat a cracker at night,

But you feel really happy about feeding that cat that cracker.

Think about the cat.

Yeah.

Like what is it that you can like elicit an emotional response of like a good feeling in you?

And you can just sit and remember that thing and just let that good feeling come up and then just allow the mind to get drawn into that good feeling.

Yeah.

And that's really what meditation is,

Right?

Something feels good.

The mind is called into it.

It absorbs into it.

And then the mind absorbs,

It becomes present,

Starts to see things clearly.

When you get into the deep meditation,

The thing that the mind sees clearly is itself.

That's why it's so transformative because all of the senses are sucked inwards and there's no more thinking even.

There's no more feeling.

It's just the awareness sucks in.

You get these deep experiences of reality,

Of just presence and whoa,

You know.

But until you get there,

Your mind's going to collect,

Start collecting,

And it's going to get stuck.

You're going to start collecting,

Get stuck.

Then you'll get a little deeper,

Then you get stuck,

Then you get a little deeper and get stuck.

Each time you get stuck,

That's another place for you to look.

Yeah,

I'm sitting here and my mind's racing.

Okay,

You're stuck.

Why is your mind racing?

What's going on?

Oh,

Because I'm like really worried about what's going on later.

Well,

Instead of worrying,

Why not just trust and allow yourself to deal with it when you need to deal with it?

Okay,

Mind drops.

Okay,

That worked.

Good.

Now I'm stuck again.

Why is your mind stuck?

Because I'm starting to get bored.

Okay,

Boredom is a feeling of aversion.

Try to breathe into that feeling.

Try to just feel it.

Let's be interested in that feeling of boredom.

What does boredom feel like?

What is it doing?

Change your relationship.

Okay,

Now that boredom's changing interest.

Oh,

Now I'm dropping deeper.

Oh,

I'm stuck again.

Okay,

What are you stuck on this time?

I'm getting excited.

My meditation's working.

I'm getting excited.

But now that I'm excited,

I can't get deeper.

Okay,

Good.

Right?

We're excited.

Expectation,

Wanting,

The wanting something.

Okay,

I don't want anything.

This is enough.

I'm okay just like this.

Right?

And it drops past that.

That's all meditation is about.

That's the practice.

As you drop,

You get stuck.

You understand why you're stuck.

You drop deeper,

You drop deeper,

You drop deeper,

You drop deeper.

And eventually it just,

It starts to get that movement.

You understand that process of,

Oh,

Just letting things go.

Meditation's about letting things go.

Right?

Each time you get stuck,

It's because there's something you haven't let go of.

Haven't let go of worry.

Haven't let go of expectation.

Haven't let go of unsatisfactoriness.

Haven't let go of control.

Haven't let go of duality.

Haven't let go of,

You know,

I don't know what,

Doubt.

Right?

That's it.

Meditation,

It's just about letting go.

Letting the next thing go,

Letting the next thing go,

Letting the next thing go.

Following that good feeling down,

Down,

Down,

Down,

Down.

And then slowly you'll start also seeing things more clearly in your life,

In your minds,

Both,

All of it.

Okay?

So we'll take the rest of the time to meditate.

And yeah,

Using this understanding,

Let's try to use our feelings.

Okay?

Feelings are the key.

Right?

Matu Ricard,

He's the happiest man in the world,

And he's a good meditator,

So there's a correlation,

Happiness in meditation.

So,

So sitting in a position that you feel comfortable and you feel stable.

And again,

Just taking that moment to feel what feels really happy.

Right?

Or loving.

Maybe it's when a child was born,

Right?

Something in a relationship or something you've done,

Just really finding,

Scrolling through your life a bit.

What elicits a real beautiful,

Happy feeling?

And feel it.

Allow yourself to feel it.

See if you can smile,

Let it express itself.

So feeling,

Just feel some beauty.

Feel love.

And let that be your guide.

That's where the compass is pointing.

If something feels good,

Allow yourself to sink into the good feelings.

What a beautiful life.

What a beautiful moment we're in right now.

We're so happy to be here.

It feels so nice to be here.

And when you got to that place where you can actually nod and smile and say truly from the bottom of your heart,

Yes,

It is nice to be here right now.

That's it.

That's the foundation for meditation.

It feels nice to be here and just keep feeling that.

Again,

You can smile,

You can take some deep breaths.

What a beautiful opportunity to practice with friends,

This community.

There's people that are listening at home or in their cars too.

Probably a couple hundred people were all listening together,

All practicing together.

How special.

I feel that the beauty of this moment,

The sangha that we're creating by practicing together.

Feel that 200 people thinking of beautiful things in their lives and smiling together.

And all of us in this room.

Smiling,

Relaxing,

Breathing,

Letting go.

Smiling,

Relaxing,

Breathing,

Letting go.

Ah.

Smiling,

Relaxing,

Breathing,

Letting go.

Ah.

Ah.

Smile,

Breathe.

It feels good to be here.

If meditation could talk,

It would say it feels good to be here.

This is it right here.

Smiling,

Relaxing,

Breathing,

Letting go.

Smiling,

Relaxing,

Breathing,

Letting go.

Ah.

Smiling,

Relaxing,

Breathing,

Letting go.

Feeling the breath flowing in and out of the nose.

It feels so good to breathe.

The breath itself is so peaceful,

So soothing.

Smiling,

Relaxing,

Breathing,

Letting go.

Smiling,

Relaxing,

Breathing,

Letting go.

Ah.

Smiling,

Relaxing,

Breathing,

Letting go.

Smiling,

Relaxing,

Breathing,

Letting go.

Ah.

Ah.

Smiling,

Relaxing,

Breathing,

Letting go.

Ah.

Remembering your happy thoughts.

Slowly reconnecting to the feeling of happiness.

Allowing yourself to smile.

It feels so good to be here with our happiness.

Smiling,

Relaxing,

Breathing,

Letting go.

You create your world.

Smile,

Breathe.

Resting in peace.

Breathing.

Reviews

This was such an inspiring talk. You have a great way of communicating the teachings so they are easily digestible and relatable. The meditation part was also great. Loved the "getting stuck" and then deepening from there on. Thank you! 🙏

Thankyou 🙏 my new meditation mantra is " I create my world"

This is an amazing talk! I’ve listened to it many times, but each time I grasp something more. Perfect for a walk that ends in a quiet meditation. Thank you for sharing Seth. 🙏🏻

I’m 8 days out of surgery and this talk has let me think of my self more.