Welcome to the Ordinary Mind Meditation Course.
Before we start,
Please sit comfortably and breathe deeply in.
As you exhale,
Release all the accumulated pressure in the body,
Mind and heart.
In this series,
We will be using meditation to investigate the reality of our life.
Our very own mind,
Heart and body.
As you listen,
Don't try to forcefully follow what I'm saying.
Simply listen to the words as you would to the sound of nature or a piece of music.
As the mind immediately begins to make judgments and comments,
Acknowledge these thoughts and softly let them go and bring your attention back to the sound of my voice.
Breathe deeply in.
Here we go.
You might be surprised to learn that in traditional Buddhist texts,
The word meditation is nowhere to be found.
Rather,
One finds the terms cultivation,
Absorption and familiarization.
So what are we trying to cultivate,
To familiarize ourselves with?
The answer is simple.
Reality.
Things as they are.
We know that all that we experience is the product of our very own mind.
A tree,
A cloud or even the device you're using to listen to this,
They don't exist independently of our minds.
Take away the mind and you're left with a bunch of different configurations of atoms and particles moving in all sorts of ways,
But no tree,
Cloud or iPhone anywhere to be found.
Our mind's sensory faculties are what gives shape to all these things.
Once you start seeing this reality for yourself,
You begin to take responsibility for this mind of yours.
Instead of constantly obsessing about so-called others,
Friends and enemies,
Dishing out praise or blame,
You can start to treat the reality around you,
The reality created by your very own mind with compassion and care,
And so you can begin to transform not only your own attitude but also everyone and everything around you.
But first,
We need to know where to start.
Before we can investigate in such a deep and precise manner,
We need to sharpen the sword with which we will be cutting through all our usual mental noises,
The various thoughts,
Feelings and sensations which we experience like an avalanche coming at us every waking and sleeping moment.
This sword is the sword of awareness.
Awareness,
Or we could better say wakefulness,
Is the capacity of resting our attention fully on the totality of the present experience,
Without getting carried away by the usual thinking and fabricating that's there almost all the time.
Rather,
We can treat our thoughts the same as we treat any other experience,
Be it the sound of a bird we hear or feeling the wind against our face.
Just an experience,
Nothing less and nothing more.
To develop our wakefulness,
It is useful to start by practicing single-pointed concentration.
If wakeful awareness is the capacity to rest in all of experience,
Concentration or absorption is the capacity to rest it on one single thing.
This is very important as we work toward developing the ability to include everything in our awareness.
So this single-pointed concentration,
Or as it's known in Buddhist terms Samadhi,
Is developed by placing our attention on one thing.
For today,
I'd like us to work with the breath.
We will start with an exercise called the healing breath.
This is a way to start the engine of the breath,
So to speak.
We're going to breathe in for 5 seconds,
Hold for 5 seconds and release for 5 seconds.
In the future,
We will be using a different,
More elaborate proportion,
But to begin with,
This is a wonderful way to do it.
So make sure that you are sitting comfortably,
The back relatively straight but without any tension.
Now,
For 5 seconds,
Breathe in,
2,
3,
4,
5,
Hold,
2,
3,
4,
5 and release,
2,
3,
4,
5.
Once again,
In,
Hold and release.
A few more like that,
In,
Hold and release.
In,
Hold and release.
Bring yourself gently back.
Now,
We will do a simple 5 minute concentration practice.
Let your focus gently rest on your abdomen around the belly button.
The past is gone,
The future is not here yet and this present moment is utterly ungraspable.
Let go of all the various worries and plans and let your focus relax on your abdomen.
Visualize it and really let yourself feel the experience of your abdomen.
Don't control your breath but feel how your belly moves out and in.
Up and down as you breathe.
Just feel it,
Watch it with the same intensity like a cat watching a mouse hole.
Let your attention fully rest in the sensations.
Every time you inevitably get distracted,
Acknowledge the distraction by mentally bowing to it in greeting and then let it go and return to the movement of the abdomen.
Enjoy this pleasant moment.
There is no such thing as failing at meditation.
Every time you get distracted,
You come back to your object of meditation and thereby you train the letting go muscle.
This is the success of meditation.
Let yourself fully dive into the sensation of the movement of your abdomen.
Truly become the sensation.
Enjoy.
Bring yourself gently back.
Repeat this meditation daily until you feel you can do it with absolute ease.
Usually this takes a few months but it could even take years.
This is completely unimportant since as we will see in the next sessions,
Mastering one practice is in fact like mastering all practices.
Once you feel ready,
You can move on to session 2.
Thank you for joining today and may you be content and at peace.
Amitabha.
