Let's get comfortable.
Whatever comfortable is for you is perfect.
I will say today that one of the things that meditators encounter during sitting practice is dullness.
Or we could think of this as sleepiness.
And so you may want to experiment with the configuration of the body when you're doing your sitting practice.
And see if any configurations of the body bring about a tendency towards dullness.
And if any other positions of the body bring about alertness.
Naturally,
Alertness is preferable.
Let's take a few deep breaths.
Deep breaths.
And they tell the lower brain centres that we're safe.
We are dealing with a global pandemic in the form of a virus right now.
But there's another pandemic that's been largely unnoticed until very recently.
And this has typically been even less detectable than the virus that we're currently battling.
This pandemic is the pandemic of anxiety.
Good news,
We already have a cure for anxiety.
And we've had a cure for at least two and a half thousand years.
The practice of mindfulness is the cure for anxiety.
In taking these conscious deep breaths,
We bring ourselves out of the deeply conditioned fight or flight response.
We tell the reptile brain there's no predator here.
And we put our attention on what's actually happening right now.
We let go of our regrets about the past,
Worries about the future.
And we just look at what's happening right now.
What's happening right now is almost always easier to handle than whatever it is we're thinking about the past or the future.
This doesn't mean that we make an enemy of the past or the future.
This doesn't mean that it's not appropriate to sometimes consider the past or the future.
It just means that when we practice mindfulness,
We develop our ability to make the choice to be in the present instead of the past or the future.
Being able to choose is incredibly valuable.
The line has been shared by many teachers.
The thinking mind is a wonderful servant but a lousy master.
When we allow our thinking mind to run on autopilot,
We can end up anywhere.
And given our training,
Our socialisation,
Our upbringing in a capitalist society,
Which is built around wanting,
It's incredibly easy for us to experience dissatisfaction.
So this training of mindfulness,
Given that it's about being satisfied with what's going on right now,
Is uniquely appropriate.
We come here and do sitting practice for the purpose of developing the skills of mindfulness.
There is nothing magical about sitting practice,
What many call meditation.
This is not a case of coming and putting in our hours and being rewarded with some kind of special ability or some grand event of awakening.
No,
This is about skill development.
And this process of skill development is the same for the skills of mindfulness as it is for the skills of sport,
Dance,
Academia,
Anything else that we might develop skills in.
This sitting practice is just a distraction-free environment that we can come to,
To develop these very special skills,
These skills that actually enhance anything else that we might do,
Given that their focus is on the mechanics of the mind.
Being that we use the mind in doing anything else,
Figuring out how it works is a really good idea.
As we figure out how the mind works,
We can also develop skills of how to influence it and eventually control it.
Wouldn't it be nice to only think what you want to think?
And we know with these two and a half thousand years of evidence,
That by training ourselves in how to think only what we want to think,
We eventually gain the ability to feel only what we want to feel.
Wouldn't that be nice too?
The practice itself is incredibly simple.
Enjoy the pleasant sensations of the breath.
When you catch the mind wandering,
Which you will,
This is successful practice.
So we celebrate and we choose to bring our attention back to the pleasant sensations of the breath.
And we rinse and repeat.
Thoughts may arise such as,
Damn it,
I keep letting my mind wander.
Or,
I just can't keep my mind on the breath.
Or,
How many times is my mind going to wander away?
This too is the mind wandering.
And so,
When we catch the mind thinking these thoughts,
We celebrate.
This is successful mindfulness practice.
And we choose instead to pay attention to what we've chosen to pay attention to,
Which is the breath which is happening right here,
Right now.
So we develop this skill in our distraction-free environment.
And as this skill develops,
We'll find it easier and easier to apply it right throughout the day.
Enjoy this practice like a game.
Aim for a new high score every day.
What constitutes a point is that moment of observing the mind,
Doing what it does,
And choosing not to think what the mind is thinking on autopilot,
Which will usually involve the past or the future,
Where anxiety is easily found.
We're going to choose to put our attention on the present moment instead,
Where usually things are OK.
