Vipassana Meditation: Day 10 - Live Q&A

Vipassana is the most powerful ancient technique for attaining mastery of the mind. Taught by the Buddha, Vipassana meditation is arguably the most famous & effective form of meditation. Retreats are held in cities and towns all over the world & have been instrumental in the transformation & healing of countless millions of people.

During the retreat, you will be guided to practice the foundational techniques of Vipassana, and follow the core principles of the philosophy.

Transcript

Welcome to the day 10 Q&A.

I'm happy you made it this far.

Again we received a lot of questions so we condensed a lot of similar ones down.

So if I don't answer your specific question,

I don't read your specific question,

It doesn't mean that it hasn't been included in these answers.

Number one,

Why I can't meditate more than 30 minutes.

I feel exhausted,

I take a 30 minute break and I restart.

Today I totally meditated for five hours,

Is it okay?

One,

Meditating for five hours is okay but on the course you are meant to be meditating more.

There's a couple of things here.

You feel exhausted.

It's natural to feel exhausted when we start to meditate.

Generally speaking a lot of people have a lot of trapped tension and tiredness within the body and within the mind and as we start to meditate we start to become more sensitive and more relaxed so we can release this trapped tension.

So it's entirely natural that when you're starting to meditate you feel exhausted.

One,

Because you're releasing this tension.

Two,

Because you're starting to go into a more subtle state of mind which your mind is only used to going into when it goes to sleep and it loses consciousness.

So what we're doing right now is we're learning to bridge that gap whilst remaining conscious and that might be a very unfamiliar skill for you.

Just keep at it and it keeps going.

What I'd say is use the recovery positions that we suggested so if you're on the mat and you need to take rest then do that.

Don't go to bed and wrap yourself up in a warm blanket and forget about the course.

Sit there on the mat.

Put your head down.

When you're ready to meditate again sit back up and meditate.

What should I write in writing time?

Wonderful,

Beautiful,

Lovely things.

Whatever you want.

Whatever comes to your mind.

Whatever you want to journal.

If you want you can do the mental notation where you list the different places that your mind goes or you can just write creative thoughts,

Creative ideas.

You can doodle and draw things as well.

Whatever you feel expresses your feeling at the time.

Three.

How to know what types of thought popped up in my mind.

I'm not able to name those thoughts.

You don't need to know what types of thoughts.

If you can name them,

If you can identify the type of thought they are then list them and get used to them.

If they're literally just your mind being dragged away and you being unable to identify what's done it then don't worry about naming it.

It's not really a necessary part of the process.

It just helps us to get deeper into things.

Eventually the Buddha says that we should get to know our mental contents,

Our mental concomitants and our mind.

These are the list of things that our mind is made up of but it's not essential for you to do that to practice this meditation.

As you get sharper,

More aware,

You'll start to notice the things that are dragging your mind away.

Four.

How to practice breathing in regular life when we work out high intensity like gym,

Dance,

Fitness,

Etc.

If not during,

Either before or after.

Remember,

Anapana is the only meditation that we need to have a natural breath for that we're paying attention to.

Whilst we're working out,

We can pay attention to the sensations.

In fact,

If you watch Pumping Iron with Arnold Schwarzenegger,

He talks about how he turns his gym sessions into a meditation by meditating on the sensations and the feeling of the muscles whilst he's in the gym.

It's something that high-level athletes constantly do so it's this shouldn't be a hindrance to your workout program.

It should be something that enhances it and allows you to gain more effectiveness and a better level of sensitivity.

Five.

Many times we are required to do multitasking.

No options without that,

Especially being a woman.

How do we stay still focused?

As by multitasking,

Mind keeps jumping back and forth from one task to another.

I think you answered your own question there,

Which is that your mind is very rarely actually multitasking.

It's just an illusion.

We're often doing micro tasks of singular things at a time.

So one,

It's more effective to time block.

Pick a certain amount of time that you're going to do a singular task for so you can focus and get it done intensely.

Two,

If the nature of your job or your behavior is that you need to jump from one thing to the next,

Then practicing anapana and keeping your mind clear and sharp allows you to use it more effectively.

Remember the analogy towards the beginning of the course where our mind is like a tense hand because it's been tight for so long.

Once we start to relax it,

We can use it for more.

That means we gain more mental fluidity and we can do everything quicker,

Sharper,

Better.

Number six.

During a passion of practice,

I just feel sensations and the flow of blood in my veins,

Heartbeat and stretches.

Sounds wonderful.

I don't come across any memory or any personal or decision taken in my life.

Is that fine or should I try to remember any memory or something?

No,

You're meant to be feeling your sensations.

You're doing the right thing.

Keep on doing it.

Don't worry if things don't come up.

Things often do come up for people.

If they don't for you,

The practice is you focusing on your sensations.

You're doing the right thing,

Don't be distracted.

Number seven.

While doing the sensation technique,

I was reminded of a bitter relationship of which I didn't yet attain closure.

I felt rage and felt like cursing him.

Today I understood that being non- reactive is the key.

How do we maintain the non-reactivity in such cases?

There is a bunch of people and experiences that came up where I was not at fault.

It produces certain pain in my heart,

In my shoulders.

How do I deal with these sensations?

How to attain mental closure from all of them?

Hmm,

There's a few layers there.

I'll address the ones to do with the technique and not the others.

One is that the entirety of the technique is feeling the reality of what you feel right now.

And from there we build everything else.

So the first step with all of this is that it's not wrong for you to feel any of this.

Feel the reality of what you feel.

What's taking you away from the practice is the stories and the interpretations of your experience that's leading you into a cycle of thinking that makes you believe that you need to be able to tie it up to be able to resolve something.

We don't need to do anything like that to resolve that.

For us to be able to attain complete closure within our lives we need to be able to feel total bodily awareness because if we're feeling total bodily awareness we can feel every single thing the body can produce.

That means that there aren't these mysteries and unclosed feelings.

So you putting a cap on the story won't actually solve the problem.

It would just end that one manifestation of a specific habit pattern and unconscious conditioning that you have.

The way to fix it is to stop yourself moving off into story and interpretation.

Don't worry about the past relationship.

That's just another distraction that will come up in your meditation.

The meditation is feeling the sensations.

If this is a hindrance for you whilst practicing Metta then you should stop practicing and go back to Vipassana.

And then when you can focus on any of these people that you're mentioning and whatever comes up with them,

Whatever horrible thing that they're doing,

You're able to send them love and be able to feel love yourself most importantly then you can stay within that practice.

That's the important thing.

Remember you sending people love,

You feeling love yourself for them is not condoning their actions.

It's basically just saying that you cannot be moved from your position of love by anything another person does.

Number eight.

While stories can't come into the mind while meditating how are we supposed to neutralize them and remove them from the core belief?

You are not.

You are meant to return to your sensations while stories come to your mind.

If you focus on your sensations then you will stop feeding other things that need your awareness to stay alive.

All of these things that we're talking about are things that we're feeding with our awareness which is the one currency of the human being.

And so if we bring that awareness back to the sensations then all these other things will fade away.

Right now basically use them as an opportunity to be able to give you a zero and one position.

If you're focusing on these things you're not meditating.

If you're focusing on your sensations you are meditating.

Simple as that.

Number nine.

I would really like to integrate this wonderful practice into my life but I'm not yet 100% clear how to do that.

I know we speak about maintaining the threat of conscious awareness in everything we do but in practical terms how exactly do we do that?

I.

E.

Do we maintain awareness in the breath while going about our mundane tasks?

Do we focus intently on whatever it is we are doing and avoid multitasking?

Should we try to catch ourselves whenever we get lost in a train of thought and always try to be present?

I can see how it couldn't be applied in our interactions with other people and during unpleasant situations where we can pause,

Feel and choose how to respond.

How can we apply the practice to everything else?

A few of those topics we already went over.

The multitasking,

The focusing,

The being distracted by thoughts and really just spreading it to everything.

You kind of answered your own question.

It's just being aware of the internal reality.

It's not necessarily being aware of the breath.

It's whatever we're doing we are feeling the internal reality whilst we're doing it.

It is in no way a hindrance to performing anything.

It's not a distraction to feel your sensations.

It's an acknowledgement of the state that you're in.

So whenever I'm doing something I am engaging the state that I'm in to do that thing.

If I can consciously feel the state that I'm in that can help me to perform the thing more effectively and better.

So just practice carrying your awareness around with you and see what happens as you start to do the different tasks in your day and start to notice how they affect you.

Think how we've been going through the postures and I say each posture activates different set of sensations,

A different flow of energy,

A different state of mind.

Everything that you're going to do in your day is just a posture.

It's a posture of mind.

It's a posture of body.

So as you go through the day find yourself being aware of the way that that particular posture affects you and affects your conditions.

That's your work.

Number 10.

Thank you for sharing with us the beautiful practice of metta bhavana.

It always brings up a lot of emotions in me and I cry every time I practice it.

We talk about consciously choosing to give love regardless of whether the person is hurting you.

I've been going through a lot of emotional pain from my past relationship,

Sorry not my past relationship,

From my relationship with my loved one who I deeply care for and as a result I've been learning about unconditional love in the past few months.

I know that he needs more love and understanding more than anyone and the more I see his unconscious patterns the more I want to help him.

Even though it is me who suffers from his hurtful behavior I really want to help make things better for him.

Regardless of whether we are going to stay together or not I want him to be aware of his destructive patterns and be willing to work on himself.

Most people do not understand and they just think I'm willingly allowing myself to be emotionally abused.

How do you know whether you are giving unconditional love or just being a martyr?

Where do you draw the line and step away?

Alright so there's a few things there.

One is you staying within the practice of metta bhavana and that's the simplest one to answer and two is giving someone love that is harming you and how you deal with that.

That's also a very simple one because and they're the same answer.

You staying within metta bhavana and you loving someone and feeling love is not you condoning their behavior and it's not you putting yourself in a relationship to them where you need to behave anyway towards them.

So metta bhavana can be practiced whether you want to stay with the person or whether you want to break up with the person.

If you want to stay with the person they're abusive then you just send them love.

It doesn't mean you give in to their abuse.

It doesn't mean you allow their abuse or enable their abuse.

They're completely separate things.

All it means is like I answered earlier this person,

Your partner,

Cannot push you away from the position of love regardless of the action you choose to take towards him.

If you choose to break up with someone it's exactly the same.

If you're breaking up with them in hatred and anger then you've been moved out of your position of love.

Whereas if you love them,

You see them as they are,

But you choose to not want to be with them then you're still staying within metta bhavana.

How do you know whether you're giving unconditional love or just being a martyr?

Yeah it's a good question.

They're very different things.

Metta bhavana and staying within love is not self-sacrifice.

It's not doing harm to myself to do good to someone else.

It's me staying within the position of love knowing I have it within so I can then generate it and send it to others.

It's not me cutting something off from myself so that I can serve another person.

Those are two completely separate things.

If you find yourself hindering your own action and putting yourself in a position of suffering to be able to love someone else then that's not the practice that we're doing here.

I'm not advising you one way or another because it's your choice how you choose to behave in those situations but if you want to practice metta bhavana,

Bless you,

Then simply hold the position of love and choose to be able to extend yourself out to another person regardless of what it is that they do regardless of how it is they try to throw you off that position.

Do not harm yourself.

Where do you draw the line and step away?

That is a personal choice.

That comes back to what we talked about when we talked about morality early in the course which is that your whole life is a series of cause and effect and it's up to you to make the decision which causes you want to bring into your life by the effects that they're having on you.

So if you love this person and you really want to stay with them regardless of how harmful they are to you then stay with them that's your choice.

It doesn't matter what other people think but if you feel it's bad for you and you're staying out of a sense of obligation I would say leave but ultimately this is something for you to weigh up.

This is a lot like diets.

Someone needs to test a diet within their own system to see what works.

You need to test the relationship within your own system to see how it works with you and to see if you really are being good to yourself or if it's a form of self-harm.

Good luck with that one.

Number 11.

Does metta have any other purpose?

Can you perform it was focusing on other parts of the body?

One,

Metta has lots of purposes.

We listed a lot of them so I don't know what you mean by any other purpose.

Meta can help with almost anything in life.

It can help to smooth your way through the world.

It can help with your relationship with yourself.

It can help you the relationship with others.

It can help to keep you in a positive state of mind and generate positivity and other people as well.

It can do so many wonderful things.

Can you perform it was focusing on other parts of the body?

Yes you can.

Focusing on the heart and the top of the head are simply the two classic positions because they're positioned where it's easy to remain non reactive and feel loved if you've activated those positions.

If you feel loving awareness in general then that's the important thing.

You send it out.

It doesn't matter where in the body you're focused on.

The important thing is that you don't interfere with the flow of it or pollute it with anything that's not really loved.

Number two.

During sleep in nights all the worst parts of my past was triggered me and couldn't allow me to sleep.

So day seven started with laziness and while meditation while meditating unable to do any since morning stuck with anapana even that is not satisfactory.

This gives frustration how to come out from this situation.

One during sleep your unconscious can be triggered.

Get used to this.

This is why it's so it's such an important and fundamental part of the technique to maintain conscious continuous awareness and that doesn't mean that problems are always going to come up when you lose that conscious awareness but what you're doing is you're allowing a gap in your consciousness so it's a space for unconscious conditioning to come in and start to be able to act again and to be able to to be able to reinstall its roots in your mind.

When we go to sleep it's exactly what's happening.

We're going into the unconscious states.

If we go into sleep well practiced and focused it can often happen that we come out of it fresher and better but this isn't guaranteed because there's a lot of things that can come up as we have a lot of different complexes to work through.

So just be prepared for the fact that when you do wake up you might be unsettled.

That's no problem because we've been training ourselves to meditate regardless of the situation regardless of the objects.

So if your object is a clouded painful suffering mind that's no problem that's great.

Actually it's a good thing because if it's that suffering mind then that means you're training yourself to meditate whilst in the worst of circumstances.

So it gives you a chance to get up and see okay so how do I do meditating whilst my mind is in this state that I don't want to face and see how long it takes for your mind to calm come back to focus and you show yourself that it's possible.

Starting with laziness and meditating sticking with anapana is no problem.

It's exactly the same thing.

Face your laziness.

Laziness is an emotion it's a flavor we need to be able to integrate it.

We need to be able to feel it and meditate when it's come up.

Sticking with anapana is also no problem.

You can do it for the rest of your life and it's a wonderful technique it will help you.

Even that is not the satisfactory this gives frustration how to come up from the situation.

That's exactly the same as we've just been saying you don't need to think about coming out from this situation just continue to practice and slowly or clear away all the mental impurities.

We all have our conditions to face that are problems that we need to face up against these are simply yours and if you face up against them and continue to meditate maybe not today maybe not tomorrow they will go away.

Just wait just practice keep on building it remember every day step by step getting better today a little bit more skillful than yesterday tomorrow a little bit more skillful than today.

That way everything improves so even if tomorrow's not so great if it's a little bit better than it was today then things are already moving forward and that means that every single day in your life is another day to look forward to because it's just getting better and better and better.

Number 13 hello wonderful yogi team.

Hi it's been such a blissful feeling to learn and practice meditation with a global group support.

One question bothers me is when we get in the material world how would we know the difference of when to have non-reactions and when to respond.

In people doing normal cause this would be important to draw the line normal chores I think yeah okay.

So one the first one isn't a problem it's just a usual misunderstanding the difference between reacting and responding and it's just an understanding of what those two things are responding is no problem you're making a choice what to do remember what we said the hero acts was the fool can only react Dan Millman said it actually in the way of the spiritual warrior.

So if you're reacting you're not acting it means that somebody has done something that's produced an unconscious reaction from you and you cannot control yourself this is the meaning of the word compulsion so check that understand that word understand what compulsive behavior means and you'll understand what we're talking about so if you're going around in your day you're meditating or feeling the sensations and you can feel when someone does something to you you feel it and you make a conscious choice how you want to respond to that that's not reactivity that's you making a choice after being aware of the situation and using your best judgment what you want to do that's what we should be doing whereas if you come across a situation and you find yourself being emotionally triggered and reacting uncontrollably because of that that's reactivity those are the two different things in people doing normal chores this would be important to draw this line yeah exactly and it's exactly what one of the things we said earlier and one of the questions is as you're going through your day notice them each of the things you do is positions of awareness and notice the sensations that come up with you within you because of that and then start to be able to catalog them and get to know yourself better through that then as you do your normal chores you'll start to understand what your internal registry is whilst going through your regular day question 14 how significant is it to be able to identify the seat of a sensation for example is a sensation from inter rib muscle or from kidney or from nerve bundle it is not significant at all later as you get to know your body you will get to know the whole network and web of sensations that exist everywhere within you and what their origins are but to know them isn't really important all that's important is for you to be able to feel sensation and feel it as sensation to not act compulsively not reactively because of that so don't worry if you can't identify where it's coming from actually to want to trace down trace it down where it's coming from is engaging your imagination because like we talked about in the last instructions today you will come to a point where what you're feeling isn't the idea of your body anymore it's something different and so if you are very attached to this idea of your body oh my rib oh my this oh my that then that means you're tying yourself to a notion you're tying yourself to the notion of yourself being these things was that certain layers of awareness those things do not exist they're too gross so you get down to finer awareness you need to be able to focus in a way that is not attached with imagination or with your preconceived notions of what actually exists number 15 namaste namaste thank you for this amazing 10 days your morning and evening discourses are very inspiring for practice is there any way to access it after the course thank you very much the morning and evening discourses will be available we're going to put together an online course that will be free as well on donation basis that will send out to and then you'll be able to watch the discourses again so just wait for that check out our Instagram page and you'll be able to will announce there when they're available to be able to be downloaded question 16 may we request the PDF of discourse is to consult the books mentioned during the course with the participants get a certificate after the tenth day of the course hmm a PDF of books to consult during the course a lot of the books mentioned during the course are just references that I snatched out of my mind that illustrate the points being mentioned so they're not necessarily study guides it's just an example of the fact that what we really are doing is in is an exploration of the internal self and all of us exist within the internal self within the internal world and so any book that you pick up is going to have references to the internal world and if you've paid attention and you've categorized that piece of yourself then you can grab those examples from the things that you've experienced the ones that are relevant to the practice are mainly the Buddhist sutras and the guide to the Abhidharma and if you stick to those then you can't go wrong because that's straight from the source that's from the Buddha and it's from the Buddha's mind and his structure of what reality is made of so I recommend those and will participants get a certificate after the tenth day of the course you will get an internal certificate that you can take with you wherever you go that certificate is the awareness of your sensations this course isn't about ticking a box becoming an official meditation practitioner or being able to get your hundred hours clocked this is about you walking away with a real skill every day you walk down the street feel your sensations focus on your breath that's your certificate it's something that should carry yourself into your life and cover every aspect of your life and you'll be able to use it from this day forward when I learned this technique I was overwhelmed with gratitude for the Buddha because it changed every single aspect of my life and that's what it should do as well for you just use it appropriately and you'll have what you want no piece of paper can match up to that okay last one question 17 for sometime I've been experiencing tingling fizzing sensations in and above my temples along the fronts of my shins and thighs and up the fronts of my arms during this course the head based sensations have intensified and at times becoming a pressure which moves from the bony ridge above temples forward and up above the top of my forehead and disappears I'm starting to feel it in my belly too not in upper torso yet is this likely to be some skin based sensation or an energy flow or a symptom of my Parkinson's please talk about meta how to use it I didn't understand thanks okay so the first one any sensation that comes up is simply an object of your meditation so do exactly the same thing with it that we've discussed on the rest of the course don't try to understand where it is what it is where it comes from simply feel it and continue to scan the rest of the body don't be distracted by this one web of sensations feel all the webs of sensations and then you will start to be able to neutralize your reactivity from jumping towards some sensations and away from others and that means that you don't react strongly to any one particular thing that does not mean that it isn't a symptom evil Parkinson's a sensation can of course be a symptom of a disease if you're worried about yourself having some form of disease then go and get it checked out please talk about meta how to use it I didn't understand thanks okay the most important thing to do with meta is the first relax your body relax yourself get in a position so you feel calm if that means changing posture then change posture if you've been meditating for a long time and you have gross intense sensations in your body that make you feel negative then get out of that that's why we usually do meta at the end of a sip so you focus a lot and also so you can change posture and relax second if you naturally can just feel a sense of loving awareness if you know what that feeling is then go to that feeling of loving awareness if you do not know what that is and you do not have the ability to move to that without an object then bring someone or something to mind that you deeply love that you you unreservedly love that there aren't going to be complications with when you bring them up for a lot of people this is their mother or someone who's done them a lot of good in their lives or someone who's been there for them or a pet bring up someone and start to identify what that feeling of love is and to be able to categorize it the same way that we started to be able to flex that muscle of the mind to be able to know what it was and bring our mind back in place you can learn to flex the muscle of the heart it's just a different skill one is a skill of the head the other skill of the heart so you need to learn to be able to feel what that sensation is of love and to be able to call it at will that might take some time don't worry if it does take some time it's no problem every day just get a little bit better at it once you can call that sensation of love to yourself then focus that sensation of love or whatever your object of awareness is that can be a person it can be a thing it can be a place it can be a whole category of people it can be a country it can be the world it can be the Buddha you've been grateful to the fact that he taught us this technique so bring the object to mind focus on feeling love towards them if any images of the object come to mind of the person or the thing come to mind where you're meditating let them come up including any troubling images that might usually bring up more complicated emotions how we know if we can continue to practice meta is if despite these other emotions or images coming up we can still maintain a stable loving awareness towards the personal thing if these throw us off MIT our stable loving awareness then we should go back to practicing vipassana or anapana and then we hold that and we generate our awareness until we continue practice until we can continue practicing meta again if we cannot simply continue with the rest of the meditation once you can reliably focus your love on mental objects then slowly start to move towards more difficult mental objects for you to feel love towards so for example we naturally start with people that we love the most in the world and then we move towards other people in our life that we have pleasant feelings towards and then we move towards more neutral people and then we move towards people that we have difficult troubling relationships with and we slowly start to let love and our stable loving awareness move through all of this this does two things it helps us to send love out to these people out to these things and it also helps our love to be unshakable unconditional so we can love and take a strong action at the same time we can be in the face of a difficult situation and need to take difficult actions and still maintaining a loving position and then after that instead of it just being an internal mental activity we can take it to our world as we walk through our world as we live our lives we can carry meta with us we can carry our love with us how I used to do this is when I was living a monkish life and when I went back to London I used to catch the subway from here to there and when I'd sit in the subway car I would just start to use all the people in the subway car with me as an object of meta I would just sit there and go through them one by one send them love and then just send a loving bubble towards the car that I was in and it would always produce this nice feeling and sometimes you actually see a physical manifestation of it like one time I walked into a supermarket and a few of the employees just walked up to me and asked me what I was doing with my life you know how can we be happy how can we this and that and my face looks like quite a hard face so it's nothing to do with the way I look physically on the surface it was to do with that loving energy that I started to cultivate around me in that feeling and as you start to build that as a bubble around you and you walk through your life then it can help to smooth the way between your relationships with people and what the world brings towards you that's how to practice meta I hope you all have a good night and a good practice if you continue to meditate after this we will finish our meditation course tomorrow on day 11 I'll see you in the morning for the instructions and the discourse namaste

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