In meditation we are basically attempting to come into the presence,
Something that I like to call the still presence because of the fact that there is a great amount of stillness there.
And what that means is we become concentrated,
Not intently concentrated,
But we rest our attention upon something.
Generally we use the breath.
And then we notice that the thoughts will carry our attention away into the past or future or sometimes a sound or a sensation will bring our attention away from our intended meditation object.
And this happens again and again in meditation.
It's a part of meditation.
But in the background there's a lots of things that are happening.
And this is when we can start using meditation as a tool to cultivate a different kind of awareness.
It's kind of like a mind training,
A personal training that each meditator can and should do.
The ability to take a subject and we could call it contemplation or pondering,
Whatever it might be.
But it's certainly not thinking.
We're not trying to create or change anything or make anything different in any way than what it is.
We're simply relying on awareness.
So if we have a negative state,
Say we sit in meditation and anger or fear,
Something that is quite noticeable comes up for us.
We can take this energy and we can,
In most cases we might call it a negative energy because it's understood as a negative mind state.
We can take this into our meditation and use it as a tool by seeing what it is doing for us in a very interesting way.
We can look at these things as same way that a private investigator might look at something that he's trying to investigate for a client.
And we're trying to do the same thing.
We're investigating this mind state,
This negativity if you will,
For a client.
The client happens to be us and the investigator happens to be us as well.
But we're allowing this whole process to take place almost like there's a,
We're taking a look at it from a distance like there's a third party.
We're seeing the anger rise.
We're seeing where it comes from.
We're seeing how it feels in the body.
We're noticing.
We're investigating.
We're not trying to change it or stop it just like a private investigator wouldn't do it.
Although as soon as we place our awareness on something it does change.
But it's not intentional.
And this is a big part of the healing process of meditation.
We see this anger come up and it could be from a sound of a dog barking or something that,
A pain in the knee that disturbs our meditation.
Just any kind of tension that pulls us away from our meditation object can cause anger or ill will.
But we can watch this come up.
We can watch it dissipate.
We can,
When it is there,
We can notice the sensations in the body.
Is there heat?
Is there a shortness of breath?
Is there a tension in the shoulders or in the forehead?
Around the different parts of the body that typically are telling us something that are pointing this stressor,
If you will,
Out to us and what it is doing.
So when we notice all of these fine nuances we become very sensitive to it.
But sensitive in a good way.
Because when we start to investigate this,
We begin to loosen our identification with the negative state.
Whether it's anger or fear or anything in between.
Or any state at all.
We're giving our chance,
Giving ourselves a chance to step back,
Watch this activity,
Seeing what it does for us in the body and in the area of feelings.
And how we can relate it to what is called the Dharma.
The truth of being.
These are teachings that have arisen from someone.
They've risen,
Often times the teachings of the Buddha are considered the Dharma or the Dhamma,
Depending on whether we're using Pali or Sanskrit.
Pali is Dhamma.
This Dhamma is a truth that comes up in the form of an insight.
Nothing that we've heard or read or come upon by somebody teaching it or anything like this.
It comes up on its own in the form of the truth.
Not the truth only for us,
But the truth for everyone and everything in existence.
For example,
Impermanence.
The impermanence of all phenomena.
The ever-changing existence of everything.
The flow,
The change,
The experience of going from one state to the next continually.
So when we experience something in our meditation or outside of our meditation that causes a negative mind state or allows us to recognize,
This is now a recognition and awareness of these mind states.
When this happens,
We can notice that this is indeed impermanent.
It's not lasting.
It's always changing and flowing.
If there's negativity that comes up,
We know that it's not going to last.
And if there's happiness and blissfulness that comes up,
We can also know that that isn't going to last.
It's temporary.
It's impermanent.
This is not a bad teaching or negative or anything like this.
It's just the fact.
When we go out into nature,
It's like walking out into Dhamma.
Walking out into a world where everything is just as it is when it's left alone.
There's green and there's brown,
There's live trees and there's dead trees.
And we don't try to change any of it.
We just see it for what it is.
Walking through the forest,
We are living the truth for that time.
We are experiencing the truth of nature.
This is the Dhamma.
This is how we can relate all of our experiences,
All of our states to the truth of the different insights that come up for us,
These Dhammas.
The fact that we look for happiness out in a material world and we are expecting to find permanent forms of happiness for ourselves,
But we're looking in an impermanent place for it.
When we realize what we're doing,
We can relax a lot more into our situation,
Which is life.
Happiness cannot be found,
Permanent happiness cannot be found in an impermanent flowing place,
Which is our world.
When this is realized,
These negative states that we experience don't become so negative.
They start to loosen our hold.
We don't identify with them so much.
They're nothing that we own.
We can't own it.
It's something that we don't have control of,
Which we don't have control of anything for the most part.
But we do have control of how we react to negativity,
How we react to all these things that come up in our world.
There's a choice there.
The choice is to be able to see it,
Be aware,
Be clear,
And understand what is happening in our world.
And that's what meditation is.
We bring our attention to the breath.
We focus on the breath.
This is our meditation object.
There's other things that we can use,
But for the most part,
The breath is a very wonderful object that is easy to come by.
It's always there and it's ever-changing.
It's not necessarily exciting and not necessarily boring.
It is what it is.
We focus on the breath.
Situations arise for us.
We notice these things.
We shine that light of awareness on them.
We're not trying to change on it.
We're not trying to change anything.
We're not trying to dwell on anything necessarily.
We're allowing the thinking process to be kind of left out of the picture.
We're certainly not having any judgment.
We're noticing how we feel within the body,
The sensations,
And the mind.
And we're learning to let go of what we previously had been hanging onto,
Such as my feeling,
My state.
And in that letting go,
The result is acceptance.
And that acceptance is what allows us to get through the world much,
Much easier.
This is a little introduction to meditation.
And I suggest that you close your eyes,
Find a comfortable posture,
And allow the meditation to work for you.
Thank you very much.
