Facing The Pandemic With The Support Of The Dharma 6/26

So,

Now it's time for your questions or feedbacks and the easiest,

Although we're not that many,

But I think still maybe the easiest is you just go in the chat and write your name if you have anything that you want to share or ask.

And you know if you know you have something then go for it because at the beginning sometimes it takes ages I noticed on computers before someone dares to ask.

So just to repeat you just write your name not the full question you just write your name and then you'll be able to voice the question or to speak your feedback.

Yes,

Sean.

So a question for you and for everybody is how to deal with,

Actually how to remember to take three breaths.

We can forget.

So my question is how do I remember to remember that?

And sometimes I just in a flash I notice that oh I'm going into my rat race and then I'm aware that I'm in my rat race so when I'm aware I can remember again to take a step back to breathe to come back to the breath.

But sometimes I or not sometimes often I think back and I think oh this was maybe a good opportunity but I missed one that was a good opportunity but I missed that one and I missed that one and I missed several opportunities.

So there are a few it's a tricky point that you point out because sometimes we say like meditation is a practice of remembering because it's the most difficult to remember.

It's linked with how much it is important for you to remember.

It's really if it's really really important you will remember more and if it's just a side thing you will remember less.

This is how we work.

So if it's like your priority in life to remember your breath as many times as possible if it becomes on the top list then you will have more times where you think about it comes back to your mind.

This how to make it a priority then comes the question yeah and that comes with understanding the goodness of it if there is any.

So when when we're doing this in the beginning it's very hard to remember but if you do it from time to time you remember you do it and you notice that there's something good in it you may remember more because you're going to like it and you build up a habit of remembering this especially as you said in difficult situations then if you do it and you find it helpful then there will be a kind of a bridge between having something to deal with and coming back to the breath.

It will become more natural and another thing that you can do is create habits around regular situations like for instance some people what they do is before they start the car if you're driving taking three breaths and then start the car every time and then it breaks the day into small moments of presence it can be before breathing your teeth or one breath before every email before sending pressing the sending button yeah before you send the sending button after writing the email just one breath and send.

It's very strange to do because you're very busy with the email and all this stuff and then suddenly it's kind of but it's experimenting that is important but remembering is one of the one of the crucial points of meditation so I will not go further with this it will come later in the seminar also but how do you remember to come back to the breath when you're lost in your thoughts what makes that you remember suddenly that's a good question to it brings us to realize something this question but so it's a question for everybody yeah so how come that we suddenly remember to come back to the breath when we're lost in thoughts we don't have an alarm that rings and say oh yes you know so some something to think about and come to your own conclusion I think.

Thank you Sean.

Do you mind if I just add to that Danny?

Yeah yeah Nicolas because it may become very quickly a discussion and that's not something I want to encourage yeah thanks Nick.

Yeah for sure there are some things to add yeah for sure yeah thanks.

Alexander you have to unmute your mic.

Okay good.

For me it my question is a little bit similar but different I had a little accident in the weekend some wood plates fell on my arm and I got scratched and it hurt a lot I'm okay it's fine but so I was with a lot of pain on Saturday and so I thought sometimes on the three minutes and meditation and things like that and but everything I wanted to do is watch YouTube movies and be on Facebook and get myself distracted I really was in pain and then I thought of meditation and I couldn't keep my head there and then something interesting happened then I didn't want to keep my head there because I thought like man it's so unnatural that I'm forcing myself if I have to force myself then I really don't want it.

So how I don't know how do you overcome your own I don't know how do you call it inner asshole or I don't know what is it.

Yeah so to start with the beginning I think when there's something painful then one way to feel it less is to distract ourselves which is a useful way sometimes and sometimes we can question that also but it is very often something that works and to some extent it's needed to keep that but the idea with meditation is to like in my view we need to have a spirit of exploring you know so and if you go into for instance if you go into readings there's a lot of research on meditation and pain lots of research and this research starts thousands of years ago and we have writings from thousand years ago about how meditation helps dealing with pain for instance and transform and help the healing and up to these days with neurosciences and with all because the meditation in the west came through the medical system very much with the mindfulness and the SR stuff and all the research that went with there's a lot that has been discovered on the focusing awareness on the pain for instance and what it does and but that tells us nothing until we experiment with it so then if you have this understanding then and this curiosity you may say well I have pain now so let's experiment a bit with it yeah it's not about getting somewhere or reaching a meditative something that will sort it's just the spirit of curiosity and experimenting and you may find that at times the fact of focusing the awareness on pain has a very all kinds of different effects can arise from this and some are really really interesting so when when you have the curiosity and maybe the curiosity will come from some understanding that there are some there's something almost a little bit like magic in how awareness transform in one way or another pain then you want to explore that and then you get momentum motivation and if you have motivation then you will overcome this only one response is distracting myself you're going to start to pay interest not all the time but sometime allowing oneself to say oh let's let's go and feel what I feel and see how it is and really focusing on it not just like trying to be present focus the pain becomes the object of awareness then and really feeling everything about it and if you have good ability of concentrating if it comes at some point what you're going to feel is very different for sure than what you feel when you're not really aware of it when it's kind of a background of your awareness it's very different if you can really focus so then curiosity would be the answer to your question if you have enough curiosity then you will accept to do that in my in my understanding that's one way of and there are other ways of answering to that but I hope it helps yeah yes if don't hurt yourself again to try out but anybody else wants to say something about his own experimenting or or asking question Iva yes yeah I think mine is not so much a question more something I noticed this week when I was coming back to the breath a few times I was able to do this but I think I realized I often do it connected to an outcome so let's say for instance I realized with the baby before I went when he cries and then I think the trigger was the trigger for me to remember was the crying so I hear the crying and then I thought on good moment to do three breaths to before I before I attend to the baby so before I go but then I realized when it worked after a few times I noticed I was more calm and the baby was more calm when I went to the baby I thought ah this is working and so then I started to be motivated to do this for that outcome I don't know if you yeah yeah yes instead of just doing it for the sake of doing it I started to do it like ah if I do this now probably I will be more calm and the baby will be more calm or so it became linked to almost a reward system yeah yes so that's something I noticed I don't know if there's a question linked to this but it felt less pure that the experience because it felt like it was connected to a reward eventually and an expectation actually almost yeah I think that's the expectation that is a problem more than the knowing that it does something it's unavoidable that you will know what it does after some time but then the expectation that it's going to do that when you do it yes can kind of it's very delicate process the calming down of the mind and so when there is expectation it doesn't help the calming down of the mind it becomes a little bit tainted with something else and that's a fine line in meditation very important every time to mention that once someone has a profound experience of quietness for instance then the next time he will sit he will look for that but it didn't come because he looked for it it came because he was with the breath or with whatever is not looking especially for something and yet there's beauty and there's need in knowing that the state is there and finding the way to create the situation so that this state comes so it's a fine line of all this but you're noticing is good enough and I think also it's useful to know if you notice that it's calming you down and it has an effect on your baby then this is very to me quite a profound realization already and it gives a sense of importance and sacredness to this kind of approach so of course it's very good if it's linked to when the baby cries you know you have to come to that and then before taking and then there will be a step where you won't need the breath also you will intuitively be able to drop into that quietness without having to need an anchor yeah of course if we do that we imagine after 20 years or 30 years of practicing that all the time you there are some tools you don't need anymore to access like other states it becomes familiar more familiar yes thank you yeah thank you Alice where are you hi yes yes um well I um from last um seminar when you talked about or how the goal was to stay with the breath but also to focus on the experience of that quietness or that's how I understood it when when I managed to manage to stay on the breath and then I have have this sensation of everything being quiet when I then focus on the sensation of my sensation I become my mind wonder so yeah I'm not sure I understood the last part so you when you manage to focus on the breath then what happens and then if I focus on the sensation yes yes okay okay with you yeah so the yeah the sensation I would say like a kind of inner atmosphere this is what I want to point out yes and where does your mind wonder then in which direction do did you notice no it's just because it can be a strong sensation which distracts or like just distracts me so it's not in a particular direction so the sensation distracts you so it means distract you from what from the breath yeah okay so then you then then you're feeling then much of your awareness is actually on the sensation of presence but it's not like you're lost in thoughts is it but it's hard to stay in the sensation of awareness harder than the breath yes it is because it's a finer object so that's why we use the breath as an anchor and then once we anchored we can feel in the air that there is an awareness that there's a witness of the breath and so with time as I was saying it's the same thing we less and less need the breath and we can more and more stay with the feeling of presence or of awareness but this we speak about mastering a practice here and years and years of practice is like playing violin or something like this you know you need to keep doing it but what you describe is for me I understand that you're doing very well the practice itself which is you disconnect from the random thoughts come to the breath and once you have a sense of the in breath going and the out breath going you sense your own watching the presence that is aware of the breath and then this becomes known very strangely it's a very strange thing because we can't observe this feeling but we can feel it it knows itself kind of it's a very it's not an object that we can observe like the breath so of course it's much more volatile you cannot really anchor into that but if you practice with time then this becomes very familiar and then you will less and less wander into distraction once you anchored like once you you you are in that connectiveness with yourself with this sense in your own presence you will less and less need to anchor into an object into something that happens into any sensation or experience and you will be able to stay in that atmosphere and then things quieten down even more yeah so that in short to that there's only one answer keep going keep doing exactly the same it's going to transform thank you hey Julia hey so my question is also about being with the breath yeah so when I'm the last time we talked about being like hundred percent with a few breaths and when I'm like inhaling exhaling and hundred percent present I get the sensation of dizziness dizziness like being on a strange drug yeah it's like a painting the sensation and it's not it's it's it's not positive or negative or something but it's it's a little strange so I was I was asking myself I think I don't breathe like too profoundly but I don't know yeah yeah yeah so yeah again a few things to say about this and one thing is first when there is a very strong concentration there's a very different feeling in the air yeah and if there's too much effort it can bring dizziness if you really really make a strong effort concentration takes a lot actually and some people some people get headache very quickly if they really want to success and you know and put a lot of energy into it then they may get headache so maybe sometimes some things can the dizziness can come a bit from that then there is also the fact that when we are aware of the breath it has an effect on the breath it changes the breath to usually if if our mind is a little bit still and we're aware of the breath the breath will slow down will become more large slow down and become less and less possible to perceive at some point there are some times where you don't feel it anymore you don't know where it is anymore you can search you won't find it it's like there's no breath yeah but sometime also the the awareness that goes on the breath disbalance it a little bit it's quite strong the breath the the awareness so it disbalances some people report that when they concentrate on the breath then they can't breathe anymore and they become very out of breath I don't think it is what's happening to you but still there may be a little bit of that too into it a little slight disbalance into not breathing enough or not breathing correctly enough or something like this but in general I think it's interesting to notice but there's nothing like I would say there's nothing that would be dangerous or there's no wrong track or you know like going in the wrong direction or something like this it's for sure not gonna stay like this all these things life is very interesting it deals with this you keep going and it will change into more balanced it will find its way you keep going the same way and it will find its way you will be able to do it with less effort first and then everything will it will fall into place so that you can you can keep going yes you want to add something Julia yes I've got a feeling that it happens most of the time when I'm really at ease when like finally it's super easy to meditate yeah so the dizziness or so because it's quite a large word dizziness how does it how it is your body is a little bit moving for instance is it a feeling of that no it's rather like scientists say that when you meditate in your brain so many other waves are yeah yeah I imagine it's something like this okay fair enough you know understanding it doesn't really matter yeah just knowing that it's nothing it's it's nothing bad it's not like you're going in a bad track or it's that knowing that it's not dangerous you know and energetically so much happened in meditation so much happened to so many people I've seen so many things so many things happening to so many people on an energy level so many things and every time someone comes with something new you know so that all these things it like and what you describe is very small so if if it's not a discomfort then just keep relax the concentration a bit and keep going like this it's going to transform into something else it's not going to stay like that okay and just to end with Erita thank you Julia so actually it was just popping in my head and then you was saying this Dennis it's this thing that when I concentrate on my breath that I get really problems with my breathing because if I concentrate too much then I have to feeling I try to control my breathing I must say I'm asthmatic I have asthma and I've really really bad experiences when I was a child with really hard asthma attacks and maybe this also connects or triggers something this feelings and then I feel really really uncomfortable yes yeah so again like generally what we can say is this is going to transform into something else so you could just keep going and one thing that that is that we can understand also that I find interesting is like I don't know how you see yourself as a person but the more we have the tendency to be like controlling situations or perfectionist or something like this the more it will affect the breath so some people report that as soon as they bring awareness of the breath they take control of it they cannot just observe it and let it go so I was saying awareness has an effect on the breath and that's one fact but another fact is that if we have a mind that control situation and like we we are good at organizing taking our life into hands and something like this it is likely that we will take control of the breath also and extend it a little bit like this making it a bit deeper like this and it's chaos we out of breath after a few rounds so some people report a lot of that so when you have like a perfectionist mind or controlling mind or and then this will directly take control of the breath and about the asthma I have asthma too and so we have of course well it's interesting because I never really reflected before your question but we have of course an intimacy with the breath already quite a lot and also all kinds of problematics around it but again just remember this like when you do it relax if it becomes uncomfortable just focus less yeah don't focus so much if it becomes discomfortable you'll come back to that to more focus maybe later and very soon also we'll have other object than the breath that may be more working for more at different times for different people.