Good morning,
Good afternoon,
Good evening.
So in many traditions,
The mind is likened to a pond.
And if you go to a pond and you want to you know,
See the little fish and insects and things.
It's no good going to the pond and getting a stick and stirring it all up because you won't see anything,
It becomes cloudy.
Or if the wind has whipped something up,
Whipped the water up,
It becomes cloudy.
So what do you do?
Nothing.
You don't do anything.
Anything you do is just clouding or stirring the water.
You can't press it down to calm it,
It doesn't work.
You can't do anything except wait,
Do nothing.
Even wishing,
Make no difference.
And so if we take that as the mind,
Even the wishing that your mind would be quiet is more stirring.
I wish my mind would be quiet.
There you go,
We're off.
We've picked up the stick,
We put it in the water and we're ready to start stirring it.
And we're not replacing so-called negative thoughts with so-called positive thoughts.
They're all just thoughts.
If you play that game,
You'd be playing it forever.
Doesn't work.
In this approach,
You see,
We see what the nature of thoughts are.
And that begins to free you from the tyranny.
And the more that we see through the nature of thought and another way of putting it is that the less attached we are to thoughts,
The less identified to thoughts we are,
The more the whole thing settles,
The more the pond of our being settles,
And we start to access,
You know,
I'm sure there's a better word for that,
But can't think of at the moment,
To become intimate with our true self,
Which is what we're looking for.
In Buddhism,
It's called no self or Buddha nature.
No self is a bit,
It's a bit of a weird term.
I tend not to use it.
I tend to use various definitions,
Presence,
Being,
Awareness,
So we don't get fixed on just one and then we know what it is.
The mind knows what it is.
That's it.
Next thing.
So we don't do anything.
Like a senior monk and his novice sitting there,
Just sitting,
Looking out.
An hour passes,
Two hours pass,
And the young monk is starting to get a bit like,
Well,
Says to the old monk,
So what next?
And the old monk just says nothing.
And that's like our meditation.
Don't do anything.
But we find that difficult,
But you must do something,
Must have something to do,
Must have a project,
Must reach somewhere,
Must have a signpost that says you've reached this,
You know,
Level of advancement.
It's all mind games.
It's all mind,
It's all thoughts.
And until we see that,
We'll keep floundering around and muddying the waters,
Stirring them up,
Trying to find the perfect pattern of stirrings,
Ripples,
Which just didn't work.
It won't work.
And when the mud settles,
What arises?
Clarity.
And there's another word for it,
Clarity.
Seeing life as it really is.
And then the suffering begins to diminish.
Because there's no end to it.
There's no end to the clarity.
It's an unfoldment,
See,
It's not a linear thing from here,
Starts here,
And goes along a timeline.
It's not like that.
That's all mind.
It's an unfoldment,
It's more like a flower than a path,
An unfoldment.
And it just keeps unfolding.
That's all that's happening with me,
With you,
With any of us.
It just unfolds and unfolds differently for everybody.
It's all unique.
What's happening now for you,
It's unfolding.
But when you get the stick and you start doing that,
The unfolding stops.
When you stop fiddling with the stick,
When you put the stick down,
The unfolding begins to happen.
The unravelling,
The undoing,
It's not a doing,
It's an undoing.
Because we've tied ourself up in conceptual knots,
Ideas,
Beliefs.
Thought repeated many times becomes a belief.
A belief,
Believed many times,
Becomes a sense of identity.
And there's your problem.
So we just sit and do nothing,
Follow the breath.
Watch,
Just feel what's here.
That's the unravelling.
The difficulty is it's so simple.
That's why it's difficult.
We don't trust it.
So,
Let's begin.
I've done a bit longer there,
But there we go.
Now,
If you want to start off with the mantra,
Obviously feel free.
You can pick this up any time you want,
Remember,
It's yours.
The mantra can be any sound,
But let's do Sharim.
We just repeat it to ourself.
Maybe in sync with the breath.
Sharim,
Sharim.
And just do it to begin with,
Just to settle the system.
Sharim,
Sharim.
Just for a few minutes.
If it feels right,
You can drop the mantra.
Pick it up again if your mind's very busy.
Just checking that the body's reasonably relaxed.
Not straining.
Where are you now?
If you keep getting lost in thought,
It's a bit too much.
Open your eyes.
Just stay into space for a few minutes.
Just notice when you're picking up the stick,
Stirring the pond.
And just drop the stick.
What's going on?
Staying in touch with the body.
It'll tell you whether you're striving or not.
Trying to get somewhere.
Just feel the breath.
Particularly the end of the out-breath.
If you lose your way,
Just drop the stick.
Take a deep breath.
And even use the mantra for a minute or two if you wish.
It's always there.
When mind settles,
Drop the mantra.
Where's the attention?
Where's the attention?
That's the end of the session.
A little stretch or a little wiggle,
Whatever.
Thank you,
Guys.
