Vipassana Meditation: Day 7 - Evening 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

Hi,

My name is David and I'm a sensation addict.

It's been about three and a half hours since my last reaction to an aversion.

I was doing my best with this whole meditation thing,

But then they brought me another bowl of brown rice.

We're all addicts to sensation and addicts to our reaction to them and we slowly start to get to know that as we do this.

And we talk a lot about the big ones and the trauma,

But really the thing that changes everything is just the reaction to all these little ones day to day that we're coming up against all the time.

We start to reprogram that,

Everything starts to change.

And then we start to really see what it is that we're carrying into the situation.

The world is continually giving us real world feedback to be able to show us what condition our condition is in.

And relationships are great for this.

Even the imaginary ones that we're engaging with while we practice metta and we start to bring back up,

Will start to show us this thing.

All relationships.

Friendships,

Family,

Sexual relationships,

Business.

It doesn't matter which ones.

Because we have a habit of making other people believe like they're causing our emotions.

Like there's something that someone else is doing that's making me feel something.

And then I can blame them for however I react to the situation and whatever else I bring to the situation.

Whereas if we have become aware of our internal state through direct contact with the sensations,

Then we completely get rid of this illusion,

This delusion.

We realize straight away what it is that we're carrying into a situation.

If I was unhappy or angry going into a situation and then I met someone that did something that allowed me to be able to act that out,

I can realize before as I replay it,

No I was walking in with that sensation anyway.

I was going to be angry regardless of the situation.

That person just gave me an arena to play that out.

And that's all we're doing.

We just project our reactivity onto the world until slowly we become more and more in touch with it.

Consistently in touch with the internal sensations so we know exactly what we're bringing to the table.

And the world helps us with that because we get this real world feedback every second.

And as we get used to this load that we're carrying,

It stops mattering so much.

If I walk into a situation angry,

It's just a set of sensations I'm feeling and that's okay.

If I walk into a situation happy,

It's another set of sensations I'm feeling and that's also okay.

It stops being this dichotomy between needing to have it one way and not having it the other.

It can be any way and it's okay.

Just like with the breath,

We don't need the breath to be calm and focused for us to meditate.

The breath can be any way.

It's just what it is and we focus on it.

Whether it's a ragged,

Intense breath or it's a calm,

Focused,

Subtle breath,

We can still meditate on it.

It doesn't make any difference.

It's the same with our internal situation.

We've just got used to believing that there are conditions that we need to set up for us to be content,

For us to be happy.

And now something slowly starts to happen as we practice this more,

Is we realize that we can just be happy.

We don't need to be happy because.

Because I got the new watch,

The new car,

Got into a new relationship,

New job,

Bought a new house,

Something went well.

Those are conditions that we set up that are entirely unnecessary to produce happiness.

If we can sit here on our mats,

Feel everything we're feeling and be happy with that,

Then that means we can be happy with anything.

Because all we're ever going to face is our internal register of sensations anyway.

So we get rid of this idea that we need to be happy because of something.

We can be just happy.

And once we get used to that,

We can just walk into the world a lot lighter,

A lot easier.

So we were talking about unconditional love yesterday and how that can seem a bit of an oxymoron at times.

Can be the same with unconditional happiness.

And this isn't really unconditional.

It's conditional on one thing,

Which is us staying in contact with reality.

Continuing to be aware of the reality of our situation,

Our sensory awareness.

If we can do that,

Then we can walk into any situation and know all we're going to face is our internal register of sensations.

And that's what we're starting to do while we're here.

Get used to that.

So there's nothing waiting around the corner for us to jump out at us.

We already know what our internal register of sensations is.

Something can come and stimulate one of them,

But we're already familiar with them.

And as the years go by,

As the decades go by,

It starts to become more and more familiar.

You know exactly what you are.

You know exactly what you're made of.

And life is just a way to contact that and start to bring the sensations out.

And you have a chance to be able to get to know yourself more and more in depth.

And then we never need to meet anything we encounter as a threat.

Everything becomes more curiosity.

Oh,

What's this new sensation?

Or what's this situation that stimulated in me these set of situations,

These set of sensations for me to be able to handle and get to know better?

And everything just becomes another situation to do that.

We have goals,

Like I said for this practice.

Very clear goals.

The first one,

Mastering the mind.

Second,

Total bodily awareness,

Total bodily equanimity,

Eventually energetic awareness,

Leading towards dissolution,

And then eventually all the way up to liberation from suffering.

The four different stages of liberation as the Buddha laid them out.

Very set goals.

And what they each mean and what signifies them is laid out very clearly within the sutras as we start to walk the path.

But then something started to dawn on me as I got deeper and deeper into this practice is that those goals are wonderful and it's good to have them because one,

They do make a difference.

Two,

They are utterly and entirely attainable.

Even the ones that seem like big ones.

There are people walking this earth right now who have attained those goals.

Go through those changes and go through those shifts in awareness all the time.

They are within our grasp,

They are within our reach.

But what dawned on me is that it doesn't even matter if any of those goals were achieved or not.

Because the more we start to practice and the more we start to feel this sensation and be deeply in contact with our own personal situation and our own personal internal register of sensations,

The less we need anything to change.

It's changing anyway.

It's all consistently changing and we become aware of it.

But we no longer need it to change for things to be good.

There is the top of the staircase and we're aiming to get there.

But ultimately whichever step we're on,

We should be entirely happy with that step.

There's no reason for us not to be able to be on this step right now,

To be feeling everything we're feeling right now and to be entirely content with this step.

And then if we get to the next step,

Wonderful.

Exactly the same there.

We're feeling everything there and we're entirely happy there.

And the same thing with the next step.

There's no longer this pressure to move on because we need to get away from this.

Oh this step's terrible,

I hate it,

I need to get to that step.

It's all the same.

As we go up,

It gets lighter,

It gets better,

It gets more beautiful,

It gets easier.

But we don't need it anymore because it's beautiful here anyway.

So there's not this pressure to move.

Just this boundless optimism that carries us up and carries us forward as opposed to pressure from behind,

Pressure to move away from something.

It's more like a gravitational pull of all this goodness we know is waiting for us as we continue to walk up the path of the staircase.

The French have a saying which I love,

Which is that every title is a story within itself.

Something like that.

Every title is a show within itself.

And one of my favorite titles is The Unbearable Lightness of Being,

The novel by Milan Kundera.

And I love it because it expresses a lot of what we're talking about.

So that something is unbearable,

What's unbearable,

Being is unbearable.

Okay so life is suffering.

We're familiar with that statement.

The Buddha would like it.

But why?

Why is life suffering?

The unbearable lightness of being.

Because of lightness.

Which is the opposite of what we're used to hearing.

We're used to hearing that it's because of heaviness,

Depression,

Sadness,

Trauma,

Negativity.

Milan Kundera tells us something different.

He says that it's the lightness that makes it unbearable.

Saying being isn't heavy.

Being is light.

Everything is naturally just light.

So what must be producing the suffering is the fact that we cannot allow this lightness.

We're holding ourselves down.

There are many things,

But there are only two types of things.

As we go deeper into this,

We start to see this.

There's reality,

The single stream,

The pure stream of reality,

And everything else.

Delusion,

Illusion,

Interference,

Whatever you want to call it.

Reality is just reality.

It's just what it is.

We focus on it.

We feel it every day.

Internal reality,

External reality,

It's just there.

It's just doing what it does,

Light,

Going through this cycle.

And then the interference is what we do when we start to fight against it.

We start to put layers in between ourselves in it.

And that's what we're encountering as we practice this.

We're encountering all this conditioning that is the interference we've created over a long period of time,

Our character armor.

If we just focus on the thing itself,

It's empty,

It's light,

And it's easy.

It doesn't need to be so difficult.

We can sit there and it can just be easy.

It can all be a beautiful,

Pure flow.

Pain,

Pleasure,

Aches,

Bliss,

Vibration,

What does it matter?

We're just feeling sensation.

It just is what it is.

All an aspect of reality available to us every second,

Taking us closer to understanding ourselves.

And as we start to be able to sit deeper within ourselves,

We start to be able to feel this.

We feel this inherent lightness,

This inherent emptiness within everything.

Within the pain,

There is emptiness.

Like I said,

As you get more into detail with it,

It's not pain,

One dominating thing.

It's pain,

Space,

Pain,

Space.

There is more emptiness than there is a thing.

There is more wave than there is particle.

And we start to feel that very deeply as we get into this further and further.

My Qigong teacher said something to me years ago.

Before I practiced for Pashna,

About five years before I practiced for Pashna,

I started practicing Qigong from my late teens to my early twenties.

And I was very stiff at the time.

I used to practice a lot of martial arts,

A lot of things.

I was doing Qigong because it was taking me along that path of developing energy and I was interested in that.

And it took me into meditation as a side road of that.

I used to stand there holding the position very stiffly,

Very strongly that he put me in.

And he just said,

It's not a holding on exercise,

It's a letting go exercise.

And that's what we're doing here.

This isn't a holding on exercise.

This is a letting go exercise.

And all we're doing is we're going through ourselves and seeing where are we holding on,

Where are we habitually holding on that has become so much a habit of our character that we don't even think of it as an action anymore.

We think of it as a noun and not a verb,

But it isn't.

It's a verb.

And as we find it,

As we find it as an action,

As we feel it as a sensation,

We can start to let go of it.

That's what we want to start doing in this sit.

Let's just see if we can sit through this easy and calm.

Doesn't need to be so hard,

Doesn't need to be so difficult.

Just to sit here,

Go through our bodies and see if we can practice a letting go exercise,

Not a holding on exercise.

Whichever step we're on.

There can be happiness at that step.

We don't need to get to the next step to produce happiness.

We just need to be right here,

Right now,

With our full focus.

And this is just as good as anywhere else.

So let's do it.

Let's practice.

Pick your best position,

Your most beautiful,

Relaxed position that allows you to feel light and easy.

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