Be Serene (Talk + Meditation)

Hello,

I'm Daniel.

I'm going to read to you a little passage from this text,

Trust in Mind,

And then I'm going to comment on it,

And then we're going to have a meditation.

That's how I like to do things.

So,

I'm going to read to you this verse from this text and then comment on it.

So,

Here we go.

Be serene in the oneness of things and erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

I'm going to read that again.

I really like it.

Be serene in the oneness of things and erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

So,

Serenity in the oneness of things.

So,

When we talk about meditation practice,

Sometimes people think it's about being calm and relaxing,

Which it is.

It is,

But there's deeper benefits to meditation practice.

Much,

Much deeper.

And one of those is just when we stop,

When we slow down,

When we learn to really pay attention to the world around us,

Then we see things more clearly.

We make better decisions.

We develop more informed opinions and we're happier.

So,

In that sense,

Sometimes it seems like when we're meditating,

We're just sitting down to do nothing for a little while.

We're just doing nothing.

And we may wonder,

Well,

What is this doing for us?

And what he's telling us in the text and what is clear is that it doesn't just affect a narrow part of our life.

If we have a diligent meditation practice,

It can change everything.

It can change everything.

And some people now are saying it like meditation makes your life just a little bit better.

And I'm a true believer.

Like I'm meditating and I think that I'm getting more and more awakened over time through meditation practice.

So,

When I see things like,

There's a book called 10% Happier and it says meditation is going to make you 10% happier.

I think,

Well,

That's no 10% not good enough.

No,

I want to be happier than 10% happier.

And I think meditation can bring more than that.

10% is very little to me.

So,

When we cultivate this serenity,

When we learn how to sit still and just pay attention to the world around us,

It has benefits that we don't even see,

That we don't even expect.

And one of those is that,

Yes,

We will learn how to hold on to our views,

To the labels we put on the world less tightly,

Hold on less tightly.

And we may still make enemies out of things all the time,

But we're going to do it a little bit less because we are in this meditation practice.

And the more we do the practice and the longer we do the practice,

The more we will see those effects,

Just that calming serenity.

Some people think that they just meditate to help them go to sleep at night to help them calm down.

And it does help with that,

But also it can change us.

It can make us better people.

It can.

And that's really what I'm getting at here.

If we cultivate this serenity,

Then it does a lot to help our lives.

This is not a little thing.

This is not a little thing.

I think of,

I sort of think of eating vegetables because if you don't have vegetables in your diet,

As a lot of Americans don't have vegetables in their diet really,

And you bring them in,

It makes you feel better.

It makes you feel better.

And it doesn't right away.

And it like if you eat one cucumber,

It's not going to feel like it did anything.

But slowly over time,

If you start eating vegetables every day and you didn't before,

You're going to feel more energy.

You're going to feel happier a little bit.

You're going to feel healthier.

You may even look,

Start to look better.

And we don't,

We don't think that way.

We just think,

Oh,

Eat your vegetables.

But the benefits of eating vegetables are enormous and we just don't want to do it a lot of the time.

But that's how I like to think about that.

Meditation is like eating vegetables for your mind.

It's just giving you a section of your life where you're not going to,

We're going to try to not focus on bullshit and we're just going to be,

Be present and focus on what's in front of us and focus on training to be mindful and be aware and just be in the world instead of being distracted all the time instead of making enemies out of everything all the time instead of being obsessed with the past or future or obsessed with things we would like to possess that we don't have right now.

It's just giving yourself that little time.

It's like eating vegetables for your brain or it's like having that time to work out,

To keep your body in shape.

It's keeping your mind in shape because we need it.

We need it.

We're sleepwalking through life and we need to do something different.

We need to do something different.

And when we start meditating,

We may think it's just helping us relax or may think it's just giving us a break or whatever,

But it's doing,

It's doing more than that.

We have certain skills that we start developing sometimes without even trying to develop them.

So we not only learn how to pay attention,

That's the biggest one is attention,

But we learn how to be fully present.

Of course,

We learn how to be a little bit more compassionate so we're nicer to people so we can put ourselves in their shoes more easily.

And we learn how to have a trait called equanimity,

Which is a trait I really like a lot and I think a lot of people want it and it is,

I define it as learning how to fall down without falling apart,

Learning how to fall down without falling apart.

So in the normal scheme of things,

When things go bad,

Sometimes we fall apart.

Sometimes one bad thing can ruin your day really easily,

Right?

And one bad thing happening can make everything else seem bad.

Even things that are neutral,

Even,

Or even things that are good.

It can really wreck us when one thing goes bad,

Whether it be a small thing or a big thing,

Right?

And equanimity is just learning how to keep it together.

It's learning how to not panic and fall apart when those reactions don't serve us.

So it is not falling apart when you lose your job,

But rather instead of falling apart,

Just reflecting and thinking,

Okay,

This is the situation.

What can I do?

This is the situation.

What can I do?

Because we could instead,

A tendency that I definitely have is when something bad happens,

I get on a train of thought and I start thinking about,

Oh,

Well this is going to lead to this and this is going to lead to this and this is going to lead to this.

And then I'm in real trouble.

Right?

And I think a lot of people are that way.

That's anxiety.

That is manifestation of your fear.

And it's worrying about things that haven't even happened because I think they might.

And sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.

But equanimity is just getting that ability to just focus on the situation at hand and not get carried away thinking of all the bad things that are going to happen.

That's not to say we shouldn't plan for the future because we should,

But we shouldn't live there.

We should live here because here is where we are and pretending that we live in the future.

That doesn't serve us all that well.

It really doesn't.

It really doesn't.

So all of that being said,

I'm going to lead a meditation and I'm going to lead a mindfulness of breathing practice.

I think next time I'll lead something else but this time I'm going to lead a mindfulness of breathing practice.

So everyone sit up as straight as you can.

And I like to recommend either the bowl which is one hand on top of the other,

Thumbs gently touching,

Resting in your lap or relaxation which is hands on your knees.

I like to do an eyes open practice.

So I'm looking at the wall here behind my computer.

That's where my vision is fixed.

And if you have a not distracting wall you can look at,

I think that is the best choice.

And if you don't,

I think just a downward gaze looking at the floor.

If there's a not interesting part of the floor you can look at,

I think that's good too.

And arrange your legs in a way where they aren't going to fall asleep.

So be a short meditation.

So begin,

I'm going to ring the bell and then I'm going to continue to instruct you.

I'm going to ring the bell three times.

And begin by taking three deep heavy breaths.

And then I want you to bring your attention to your breath so you can either focus on the breath coming into and out of your nose or if that's hard you can focus on the rise and fall of your belly.

This is something that's happening all the time but we don't pay a whole lot of attention to it.

Just notice,

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

And every time something comes to distract you,

Every time you start daydreaming or thinking about what you're doing later or thinking I wish this meditation was over or whatever,

We just come back to breathing in.

We don't beat ourselves up,

We just come back to breathing in.

Breathing out,

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

A lot of people find it really helpful to do a counting practice and I think that's good and that is where you mentally note one on the in breath,

Two on the out breath.

In one,

Out two.

And that helps with sort of the anchoring.

That one is always there for us to return to and it's a little bit easier for us to return to it than it is just to breathing in.

And if you really have a scratch that you feel like you need to take care of,

Go ahead and just do it and get it over with.

That's what I say because obsessing about a scratch we have to take doesn't help us either.

So if you feel like you have to scratch,

Just do it and get it over with.

And we will sit here for just a few minutes,

Just breathing in.

And that'll be it for today.

That was our following the breath practice and I want to thank you for coming and sitting with me today and I welcome any questions or comments and thank you for being here.

Have a good day.