Vipassana Meditation: Day 10 - Morning Discourse

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

We're about to burst this silent bubble that we've been building.

Watch out.

You can always be nuns or monks if you want to keep the silence going.

But like we saw yesterday,

Communication can also be affected by what we've been doing,

Both the speaking and the listening side of it.

We can consciously communicate.

We can consciously bring our presence to the moment.

And I'm sure you saw yesterday when we did it how beautiful it is when you see someone actually doing that.

And how much wisdom comes out of everyone's mouths when they communicate like that.

Whenever they're up here and really in presence and just letting themselves express themselves freely,

Then it just comes out so smoothly and naturally.

And with the listening,

When we don't have any pressure to say something next and we stop our minds from interfering,

Then everything we listen to becomes an object of meditation.

And so we can extend this into the communication as well.

It doesn't need to be the end of something beautiful into a chaotic mess.

It can just be an extension,

Continuation,

Carrying it through.

And that's what we've been doing with all of this.

People ask a lot,

Does meditating interfere with the way I'm going to live my life?

Does me focusing on my breath,

Focusing on my sensations,

Stop me from being able to get back into doing all my normal stuff and picking up my responsibilities?

And it's actually the opposite.

We just take the technique itself as our teacher and we can see what we need to do.

Just first we gather focus and awareness and clarity and then we take it to everything without exclusion,

Including our relationships.

So why would anything that we do in our lives be any different?

Just gather the clarity and focus and we take it to everything we do.

Natural,

Simple,

The natural next step to what we're doing.

If we're in a situation,

All we're ever going to experience is our sensations and that's what we've been doing while we're sitting here.

So it's no different.

And to me that's one of the most beautiful things that we get from this technique and I remember when I got it and it's just certainty.

Because whatever we're going to face now,

Any situation,

However extreme,

Whether it's a war or a global crisis,

A breakup,

Anything,

A regular communication,

Our job,

All we're facing is sensations.

So it seems like we're facing a million and one things but we're only ever going to face our internal sensations.

It's just that there will be different delivery mechanisms for those sensations.

Sometimes a person,

Sometimes a thought,

An idea,

A memory,

A feeling or sometimes something on a larger scale than that.

Sometimes a breakup,

Sometimes a death in the family,

Sometimes a global crisis.

But ultimately it stops mattering because they are just injection mechanisms,

Delivery mechanisms.

The package is the same.

The package is your internal world,

Which is what we've been exploring.

That's all anything is going to make us face.

So if we're already facing our internal world and we've already developed this relationship and communication with it and appreciation for it,

Then all the world,

The external world can give us is different entry points into that.

And then it really just becomes one large process.

When we take away these barriers between us and what we experience,

One of the exceptional things about this technique is that we're not adding anything in between,

We're taking away things in between so we can just authentically experience the world,

Authentically experience ourselves.

Once we have that certainty,

Then whatever we face stops really mattering,

Stops making a difference because you're just facing the whole cake regardless of which slice of it you're having at that moment.

Then we start to see what we were talking about last night,

That everything we're encountering are positions of awareness.

We've been moving through our body and giving ourselves positions of awareness that we can reliably feel so we can enter into meditation.

The more I started practicing,

The more I realized that everything we encounter is that.

Everything we encounter is simply an encapsulated position of awareness that we can choose to meditate on or not.

Books,

Movies,

Music can go through all of them.

If we start to understand and directly experience this internal landscape thoroughly,

Then as we encounter a position of awareness outside of us,

We can place where it is in the internal landscape.

We can place what it is in the internal landscape.

Some examples of that.

One is from Frank Herbert's novel Dune.

There is a scene where the main character Paul Atreides is put through a test and he has to put his hand in a box.

He doesn't know why but he does it.

He puts his hand in the box.

The person giving him the test then puts a poison thimble to his neck and he's told that the box is going to make him feel a million and one different things and if he removes his hand from the box,

He's going to get pricked with the thimble which will kill him instantly.

The box won't hurt him.

It's just going to make him feel different things.

And so he has to sit there whilst his hand feels like it's burning,

Turning to shreds,

Turning to dust and decide whether he's going to pull his hand out of the box and die or keep his hand in the box and live.

That's Anna Panner.

Anna Panner bridging towards Vipassana as I'm sure we all realise now.

There's a million and one things tugging us in different directions and we have a choice whether we're going to stay in the box or not or if we're going to take our hand out of the box and give up on the process.

Another ancient Greek story,

The Odyssey,

Odysseus fought a long war,

Finally can go back home afterwards,

Goes on this journey and then he finds that the seas are working against him.

Wherever he sails his boats,

He keeps on getting blown around and can't go back home,

Can't find a way back home and he doesn't know why.

And then he gets told there's this demigod called the old man of the sea and if you go and find him,

Then he can tell you anything to do with the way the seas work,

The currents,

He knows everything that happens.

So he's like great,

So he sails his boat to that island,

Goes and finds him but there's a catch that he's got to hold on to the old man of the sea,

Whatever happens,

Whatever the old man does and he can't let go.

And then finally the old man will reveal his secrets to him so that he can ask whatever question he wants.

So Odysseus is like yeah sure,

How hard that can be,

I've just got to hold on to this old man,

No problem.

So they go to the island,

They catch the old man and Odysseus grabs him and holds on to him.

But then this old man turns into a lion,

Turns into a tiger,

Turns into a shark,

Turns into fire,

Turns into water,

Turns into Odysseus's mother pleading with him to let him go,

Odysseus's wife that he's left at home,

Trying to convince him to let go and just have a conversation with him but Odysseus has to hold on regardless of what he feels,

Regardless of what this old man turns into.

And then finally at the end of it,

He gets some wisdom,

Wisdom is revealed.

This is Vipassana,

It's exactly what we've been talking about.

The Buddha,

Every phenomenon fully experienced from beginning to end becomes emptiness and gives us wisdom,

Gives us insight.

Then in song lyrics,

You've got the Beatles,

There are places I remember all my life though some have changed,

Some for better,

Some forever not for better,

Some have gone and some remain.

All those places I remember with moments with lovers and friends I still can recall,

Some are dead and some are living.

In my life I love them all.

This is Metta,

This is John Lennon going back through his life,

Seeing all the scenarios of his life,

All the channels of his life and realising all the things that happened,

All the things that changed,

All the things that he experienced,

All things that he can love,

All things that he can express love for.

So we have three examples there from completely different situations,

Sci-fi novel,

Ancient myth,

Modern pop song and they're all positions of awareness that we can tap into and now that we know the internal landscape we can start to feel what they have to offer us.

So that's all we're going to encounter when we start going back to the regular world is we're going to encounter more positions of awareness and the question is do we let any object throw us off from our awareness?

Do we let any object take us out of us being able to focus on it with clarity and non-reactivity?

That's the only question.

There's no end to meditation.

Meditation is just a big word but it really just means us bringing our presence to the situation,

Bringing our full selves to the situation,

Being able to experience it.

So we're going to start doing that again today,

Start stepping into it.

Before we do that I'd like to express some gratitude to everyone that allowed this technique to come to us and there's a long line,

A long chain of people that brought this technique to us.

There's a long chain of people that just brought this technique to me and so to all of us in the modern world it's an even longer chain.

It wasn't just the Buddha that didn't want to teach.

There could have been a barrier to us until he decided to.

In the modern world there was a disagreement within the Buddhist community of whether the world was ready for Vipassana or not.

Vipassana had been kept in the monasteries and the nunneries for a long time but within the Buddhist world there was this discussion of whether it was the right time,

Whether the world could take it or not,

If they were ready to be able to learn it.

And a Burmese monk named Ledi Sayadaw decided to start teaching it to lay people.

Through him,

Sayagi Ubekin,

The Burmese civil servant learnt it and he took it back into the world and started to teach people in the secular world how to practice this technique and delivering it to them.

Teaching it to his employees,

Teaching it to politicians,

Teaching it to heads of state until it started to spread quite wide.

And his system still exists.

He created some centres that teach all around the world.

They're called the International Meditation Centres.

You can have a search for those and find them.

And there's a bunch of them around the world where you can go and practice.

And he passed his tradition onto Mother Sayamiji,

His head student.

And she very recently passed away actually.

And so I'd like to express gratitude to them,

Especially to that lineage and those centres because my family has practiced at those centres.

And so it not only delivered the technique to me,

It delivered the technique to my family as well and brought it into our lives.

My mother did her first course within that tradition.

And then Sayagih Ubekin had another student called S.

N.

Goenka,

An Indian Burmese man.

And I feel the whole world owes a debt of gratitude towards S.

N.

Goenka because he took this technique and he created his own centres and his own system that taught the technique in hundreds of places around the world,

Quite possibly to millions of people.

And so he brought this to the mainstream and allowed us all to have access to it.

Huge debt of gratitude.

He did an amazing job.

And then of course there's the Buddha,

Who nearly 2,

600 years ago dedicated his life to finding the answer to human suffering,

How to overcome human suffering.

And then after he found that answer,

He taught for 45 years after that to everyone,

Gave them the ability to be able to do it.

And that resonated so strongly throughout history that 2,

600 years later,

The skill still exists today.

It's still right here and it still works.

You don't need to join a religion.

The Buddha didn't make Buddhists.

That happened after him.

You don't need to start following a belief system.

You simply follow these steps,

Follow the technique and it works.

It gives us a framework to deal with suffering.

Whether or not we attain liberation,

Full liberation in our lifetimes or not,

We all now have the skill to do it.

And we can all definitely approach our complexes,

Our individual complexes,

And be liberated from some of them.

And whenever something comes up that we do want to be liberated from,

We now know how to do it.

And that's because of the Buddha.

In my own personal life,

I'd like to thank all my teachers.

I practiced hard for nine years before I found Vipassana.

And so none of those teachers taught me Vipassana,

But from 14 to 23,

I had a lot of teachers teaching some of the techniques we've talked about here.

And I feel without that practice,

I wouldn't have been ready for Vipassana when I did find it.

I also think without the backlog of suffering in my life,

I wouldn't have taken it seriously.

So I'm actually very thankful for that suffering.

I'm very thankful that I was at breaking point and I needed a thing to fix me.

I needed a thing to make it better.

So that when I did find Vipassana,

I gave it my whole heart.

And I'd like to thank every person that helped to be able to deliver this technique to the modern world.

Not just the key figures,

But all the people who volunteered,

All the people who kept the tradition,

All the monasteries,

All the nunneries that kept this alive so that we have it today.

And I'd like to thank my Rinpoche,

Who I owe the world to,

And in particular this meditation center.

So before we finish,

Let's all practice a bit of metta,

But this time let's collect ourselves strongly and let's focus our metta on this tradition,

This long tradition of people who've brought the technique to us that we are now a part of,

That we are the end of the chain of.

This is the whole reason why we started running these courses.

And one of the main reasons why we formed this company to do this is because we feel that this skill is too valuable for the world to ever lose again.

So we want as many people in the world to know it as possible so that it can never be lost from the world again.

So regardless of whether someone can travel,

Whether they have the money to come to a center like this,

Or whether they can just sit at home and practice,

It's available to everyone,

Regardless of where you are in the world.

The second reason I teach is because of my 14 year old self.

Now that life seems a very long time ago,

But I still remember that 14 year old self and my family that were all deep in suffering,

And I can see how wonderful this technique has been for them.

And I see that this technique is exactly what we needed when I was 14 for us to be able to overcome this suffering.

Now I love my life and I'm happy I have it,

But there are people out there who are suffering,

Who genuinely need this technique,

Who are in positions much worse than I was in when I was 14.

And like I said,

One of the most powerful things this technique gives is certainty.

That's the fourth noble truth.

After we've experienced the answer that there is an end to suffering,

The unconditioned states,

The fourth noble truth is that there is a way.

There is a way to get there,

There is a way to reproduce it.

And so to anyone out there who's in suffering and who really needs this technique,

That's the reason why I teach this.

Because I would want my 14 year old self to have it and not to have to just sit in lofts in North London ringing bells and chanting,

Things that I didn't understand,

But to actually have a method that works right here and right now.

So let's get ourselves ready.

Let's start to focus ourselves so we can practice metta and send some love to all these people who brought the technique to us.

Reviews

And deep appreciation to you and the good people at Yogi Lab. Bless your work.

🙏🙏

Super inspiring

This was the second round of this course for me. Dave is just amazing with all hisexellent experience, brilliant quotes and clear easy skillfull explanations. Thank you so much, it has really changed my life🙏🏻I am still in unspeakable suffering, but now I have a way to deal with it.