Vipassana Meditation: Day 9 - 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

Today let's talk about death.

Death and the process of dissolution.

There's many different scenarios,

Phenomenons,

Phenomenon,

Situation,

Sensations that we're facing but by now we should realize they all have the same solution,

The same approach.

As we start to take this to different areas it becomes obvious.

We're sitting meditating,

Focusing on anapana,

We get distracted.

The solution is focus on your breath,

Gather your awareness,

Feel something that's really happening.

Then we're practicing vipassana,

We feel sensations,

Our mind gets dragged somewhere else so we become reactive,

Focus on sensation,

Don't react.

Exactly the same thing.

And then with metta we feel something real,

We feel love within us and we want to be able to observe an external phenomenon,

A person and stay within the reality of that emotion without being thrown off.

And then we start to take it to the world,

We start to try all the different postures,

Feel all the different things,

The situations make us feel.

Going and walking into the world,

Looking at people again and it's exactly the same thing.

Simply perceive reality.

Many different situations,

Many different problems,

Same solution.

And it's really just simple.

It's even simpler than we've been talking about it.

It's just observe the truth.

The truth will set you free.

Because if you're feeling the truth or resting in the truth then we're not being confused by delusion,

By illusion,

Being taken off-center,

Living in an imaginary world versus the real world.

And so whatever we face during this path and we might start to face some strange things as we go deeper inside and start to see the more fundamental nature of reality,

The response is always the same.

There might be different distractions that we think warrant a different response and for a while we go through a cycle of thinking we need to figure some other way out of approaching them but then eventually it comes down to the same thing.

Feel it,

Feel it completely,

Don't react to it.

That's it.

That's the answer to all of this as we go along the path.

The truth is a certainty.

We have the single stream of truth,

The things that exist and the interference,

Everything that doesn't.

Death is another certainty.

Whenever we're born into this world we can be sure we're gonna die.

Simple as that.

And in our culture it's become a thing that we avoid quite a bit,

We hide from for some reason.

But it's there,

We all have to face it and facing it gives us a certain confidence and strength.

Anyone that's faced it in reality will tell you that but also facing it internally,

Facing the concept of it gives us a strength.

And ancient cultures approached it differently.

The shamans said that death was an ally.

Some of the traditions within South America say that our death is always waiting a hand's distance away,

An arms distance away from our left shoulder,

Behind us over the left shoulder.

It's waiting there because at any moment it can just reach out and touch us.

And that's why death's an ally because when we bring our death to mind,

When we bring the fact to mind that my death is right here,

Not far away,

Not years in the future,

Not somewhere else,

Just right there and at any moment it can reach out and touch me and I'm gone.

If I keep that in mind then I remain present.

It separates the truth from the illusions and it brings me right back here,

Right back to focusing.

I can use it as a way of centering myself.

The Stoics said exactly the same thing.

Stoics have a lot in common with the original Buddhist practitioners as well.

A lot of the Buddhist followers in the beginning,

People who renounced their positions of power like the Buddha,

Renounced being a prince,

He had followers who were kings,

Emperors,

Queens,

All with him.

The Stoics,

The prominent ones that were left with emperors,

Some of the richest people in Rome at the time and had a lot of practices to humble themselves,

To bring themselves back down to reality and one of them is Memento Mori,

Remembering your death.

As they would walk around they would have someone next to them just whispering it to them every now and then.

Memento Mori,

Remember your death.

Exactly the same thing as the shamans.

Helps to bring us back to the present,

Stay focused,

Stay centered right here.

The Samurais took it even a step further where every morning when they'd wake up they would sit and meditate on a thousand ways that they would die.

Walking out of their door,

Getting chopped down by an enemy,

Walking down the road,

Getting run over by a horse and cart,

Getting caught up in a sea of enemies in a battle,

Getting ordered to commit suicide,

Seppuku,

By their master.

So that by the time a samurai would leave their house in the morning they'd already faced their death a thousand times.

They'd already faced the big death so all the little deaths didn't matter.

The little deaths of disappointment,

The little deaths of facing something that we find uncomfortable,

Of meeting an aversion,

Meeting something in life that we don't want to encounter,

A difficult situation.

Once that's already been swept away by our big death then we're free to experience it as opposed to just react to it.

It leaves us that freedom that Nelson Mandela was talking about,

That internal freedom.

And slowly as we start to touch this concept we realize it's not a dark concept at all,

It's a very light concept.

Helps to alleviate us of this fear of things waiting for us in the future.

Our death is waiting but it can be a benefit,

It can be a friend,

It doesn't need to be an enemy.

It can be an ally and we can use it.

Just like we have our life cycle,

Our complexes also have their life cycle.

Like mini versions of us being born,

Being sustained and then eventually fading away.

The same thing that's going to happen to us.

And as we go through dissolution we get to watch this.

We get to watch this cycle continue.

We get to see it very clearly.

Yeats said something about it.

The famous poet William Butler Yeats.

He had a poem called The Coming of Wisdom with Time.

It goes,

Though the leaves are many the roots is one.

Through all the lying days of my youth I shook my leaves and flowers in the sun and now I may wither into the truth.

So you see to Yeats coming to the truth wasn't a process of growth.

It wasn't a process of growing leaves and flowers and shaking them in the sun.

That's what happened in the lying days of his youth.

Wanting to adorn himself,

Display himself in a certain way to the world.

That's what the poem tells us.

For Yeats coming to the truth was letting all of that die.

Letting it all die,

Letting it all wither away and that's what brings us back to us.

To wither into the truth.

So it's the same thing that technique that this technique is teaching us.

Which is that we don't need to add anything on top.

We don't need to grow into a thing.

We need to let all the unnecessary layers die.

Just let them fade away and then inside of all of us we have this truth.

We just need to return to this process of homeostasis.

Let all the layers fade away.

Let the character armor fade away.

Coming back to Wilhelm Reich's concept.

That we have built this armor around ourselves to defend ourselves from what we're sensitive to.

To defend ourselves from our own vulnerability.

At some point we felt sensations and decided that they're too much for us to take.

And so we've built shields around us to defend us from them.

And what Wilhelm Reich calls our character armor,

We might just call our character.

And that's what's difficult about this process.

Is that as we start to come in contact with these sensations that we're blocking.

With these aspects of ourselves.

We realize that what we're dismantling is our idea of ourselves.

And that's why it's so important to stay with the reality and not the concept.

The stories might be entertaining.

They might be horrific.

They might be boring.

It doesn't matter.

But they might be entertaining too.

But even those entertaining stories are just a layer of the idea of ourselves that stops us from getting down to the reality.

If we can feel the reality then we have what we are anyway.

And we get away from this idealized image of ourselves.

And we come back to the truth.

We wither into the truth.

Maybe there's a sensation in my shoulder that I'm just unwilling to feel.

And so my body has consistently built a block around it.

A block of tension.

So that I cannot feel underneath that.

I cannot feel into that point in my shoulder.

And that tension has become a constant.

It's no longer an action that I think I'm taking.

It's become a facet of my character.

And only by feeling into it and realizing that I'm doing that.

I'm not that.

Do I get to this reality underneath?

Do I get to be able to feel this sensation I've hidden for some reason?

That's why it's so important to feel everything react to nothing.

Because when we get to the point that we can feel everything and we're willing to feel everything regardless of whether it's blissful or if it's painful then we can start to let go of this armor.

We don't need it anymore.

Not only do we know don't need it,

It becomes counterproductive.

Because it is what's stopping us from accessing the totality of ourselves.

We've got all these pieces of information.

All these pieces of our character that are sitting there just waiting for us to contact them.

Waiting for us to communicate with them.

And we've put this armor in between us and those sensations.

So when we feel pain I don't say it's a tool just to get you to engage with it.

And say that it's not an enemy because of that.

It's because it's just an aspect of ourselves speaking back to us.

An aspect of ourselves that is now becoming available that before was unavailable to us.

And so as we start to contact it and start to go into it we get more of ourselves.

So even these pains are a benefit to us.

Even before we could become a quantumist to them.

There are more of us becoming available.

More of us coming to the surface.

And this is how the process of dissolution occurs.

It's that we're all like icebergs and we see this tip at the surface that's above the water.

But then underneath we've got this massive mass of ourselves waiting for us.

And if we're willing to put our heads under the water and to dig in then we can reclaim all of that.

All of our mass.

Bring it back up.

Unfreeze the assets.

I used to teach some people in the financial industry and in business in London.

I thought of ways of explaining this process to them.

I thought it's exactly the same as the different asset classes.

You've got your frozen assets,

Your fixed assets,

Your businesses and your fluid capital.

And sometimes your debt.

So we go through the same process with our sensations and with our character.

It's exactly what we're doing.

We're going through this process of unfreezing our assets until we have more fluid capital to be able to bring to everything that we do.

No different.

All these systems usually mirror each other actually when you start to analyze them.

They all have parallels.

The solar system,

The financial system,

The human body all starts to follow the same structure.

And important when we talk about this is our frozen assets.

Because our frozen assets are like the blocks of us that we don't even know exist.

Maybe we've got these large blank areas that we just feel like tiny surface level sensations in and we skirt over them because of that.

And we think oh this area there's nothing interesting going on there it doesn't matter.

If we've got this tiny blank I mean this large blank area that means that's one of our frozen assets.

That is an aspect of ourselves waiting to be discovered.

That's a forest in the kingdom that no one's gone into in a long time and if we send someone into it we can start figuring out what's going on in there.

So those frozen assets are actually really valuable to us.

They're truth waiting to be discovered.

Truth that we don't have access to yet.

And this is what happens with the life cycle of a complex as we start to go into dissolution.

And as the Buddha described it this is our goal.

Mastering the mind is all we need to walk away with this from.

But then we've got the other skills along the way.

Total bodily awareness,

Total bodily equanimity,

Energetic awareness,

Eventually dissolution.

Because dissolution is the thing that takes us out of the conditioned state to the unconditioned states.

In the Buddhist terms out of illusion into the truth.

That's the end of the path of the Four Noble Truths.

Having direct experience of the unconditioned states so that we ourselves can see reality for what it is.

Why it's so important is that it teaches us this cycle that everything goes through which is what the Buddha's been talking about the whole time.

Everything is impermanent.

It's empty.

There is no self to it.

And there is a way out of this suffering and this is the way to it.

And when we experience that we know it for ourselves and we realize how simply and how directly the Buddha has really been putting his teaching.

Because we might be sitting there thinking that some things fall into this category and some things don't.

Whereas when we experience the unconditioned state we realize everything falls into this category.

Everything can be dissolved and dismantled and enter into this flow.

And once we experience that directly and we come back it changes the way we approach our sensations.

Our sensations are on an inevitable cycle towards being unfrozen.

That's what's happening.

The only real question is are we going to unfreeze them consciously or are we gonna wait for the moment of our death for them to become unfrozen?

That's the only real question.

How many of our complexes between now and then can we unfreeze consciously?

Can we loosen up?

And what happens is really very simple.

You can describe a complex process that leads to dissolution and the Buddha describes it in the sutras.

The Satipatthana Sutra and the Anapanasati Sutra in particular.

But it's really just going from gross sensation to subtle sensation.

Going from frozen asset frozen area where we can't feel to bringing the area into awareness,

The sensations into awareness,

The complex into awareness and that might start to just feel like being able to feel the surface layer of it without it being sensitive.

Then the next layer is going to feel like your meditation is getting worse but it's actually getting better because it's the sensation becoming activated.

And when these sensations that we've repressed for a long time become activated it often equals pain.

Because it's all this heightened sensation laying underneath the surface that's been trying to get your attention for a very long time and now finally you're listening to it.

And it's there waiting for the attention,

Starved of the attention.

And then from there it becomes more fluid.

It goes from this very active sensation to a smooth and more fluid sensation to being able to move through it,

Feel the space between the pain,

Then eventually feel it as an energetic network and then it might start to feel blissful and painful at the same time,

All together.

And then eventually you can just feel it as it is.

Which is a web of activity expressed through energetic activity in the body that is connected to other things within the body and as we become non reactive to it,

It unwinds and it dissolves.

And that's the life cycle of a complex.

And then we have released some of our fixed assets,

Our frozen assets into our fluid capital.

We have this excess energy,

We have this extra piece of ourselves that had before then been completely occupied back in the system.

And if this is a major complex that's attached to the total web of sensations that we are currently feeling,

That's currently active in our lives,

Then the whole body dissolves.

And this is what the Buddha called dissolution.

And then we have an experience of the unconditioned states.

To experience being outside of the causal chain and experience reality directly.

And then we'll come back and you'll probably think,

Oh why did I get taken out of that beautiful state of meditation?

Why am I back to this?

Did I do something wrong?

No you didn't.

It's just a cycle going between the wave and the particle.

And we should get used to that.

When we fluidify,

We go into the wave.

That's the unconditioned state,

Infinite potential.

And when we're back here as Jason and Josh,

We're in the particle.

We've put our identity back together minus that complex that we just dissolved.

And here we are again to start that process.

To decide whether it's worth for you to climb another mountain.

Because now you're back at the bottom again.

Slightly changed,

Slightly better.

But you have the choice.

Do I want to go through that process again to climb another mountain?

This is why I feel very thankful that I was deeply in pain when I was a kid and when I was younger.

And I carried that with me.

Because if I wasn't in so much inherent pain anyway,

I probably wouldn't have taken it so seriously climbing the mountain.

And now I wouldn't do without it.

I wouldn't go back and change any of it because it's what led towards me learning this skill.

Which to me is the crowning jewel of life.

Because once we learn how to practice this,

This whole dissolution process doesn't even really matter.

Because we take it everywhere.

We take it into everything.

And today we're going to take it into one more thing.

Some of you might be very upset to hear that today we're going to start talking.

So we're going to lose a little bit of energy.

Well we're going to talk in a very specific way.

This isn't the day where the silence ends and where you get a chance just to talk with each other.

That will be tomorrow.

But today we're going to practice an activity called relational presence.

And just as we went to our relationships and learnt to be able to create that connection between our relationships that allows us to maintain that stable loving awareness.

Today we want to be able to bring this presence into talking and listening.

So all of us are going to stand up here,

Allow ourselves to clear our mind completely.

Whatever we thought we were going to say before we came up here,

Don't say that.

And then we're just going to allow ourselves to talk.

Just naturally spontaneously talk.

Connecting with the reality of the self and seeing what comes out.

Staying in a meditative state whilst we're up here.

So despite the fact that I'm looking at Josh and talking to Josh and directing what I'm saying towards him,

The primary thing I'm focusing on is my meditation.

It's me staying within my sensations and within my reality whilst I communicate with him.

And just let whatever wants to come out come out naturally.

And for all the listeners we're doing the reverse.

We're learning active listening.

We're going to sit there,

Do the same thing as the speaker,

Clear our minds,

Not focus on ideas that come from what the speaker is saying,

Not come from thoughts about what we're going to say when we come up here.

Just meditate on the speaker.

We can bring the transfiguration together with this.

And just actively listen.

Collectively harness all of our focus to be able to bring it to the person communicating with us and give our full awareness to them.

So that tomorrow when we do start talking in a regular setting we have a framework for how to bring our presence to the communication if we wish to use it.

And then we can walk,

Talk,

Get in relationships,

Eat,

Do everything else with presence.

We start to bridge the gap to bring it back to the world.

That's why today is very important because it is your last day of complete silence.

That pressure cooker we talked about is something that I would advise you to turn up today.

That pain is just feedback from your body,

It's communication with the body.

If we want to push deep into ourselves today is a very good day to do it.

Because tomorrow even though you may not talk very much you're going to notice something.

As soon as you do start talking a certain layer of sensitivity disappears because we're engaging a layer of activity.

That some of those pains are going to go away,

It's not going to feel as intense when you're sitting anymore,

It's going to feel easier and more pleasant actually.

But it's also going to be more difficult to dig in,

To dig into this,

This container that we've been building.

So today is the day to use that.

If you really want to dig in,

You really want to discover that internal landscape and the areas of it that we've left hidden for a long time,

Today's the day to do it.

So let's do that now.

Let's get ourselves prepped to practice,

Find a comfortable position,

Start to engage with this process of slowly dying.

Reviews

That was excellent 🙏

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