Day 006/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

In order to meditate,

People come here to meditate for many many different reasons but in general it's learning how to relax the mind.

And please keep in the front of your meditation,

The idea is to relax and get the mind to be nice and peaceful because you can't get the mind peaceful when you're really tense.

It's one of those stupid jokes of mine,

I'm not sure if you heard about the guy,

Somebody was asking me about jokes earlier,

Who went into the psychiatrist's office and he said,

I've got a problem,

What's your problem?

He said,

Sometimes I think I'm a marquee,

Sometimes I think I'm a teepee.

He said,

This is weird,

You think you're a marquee?

I said,

Ah,

I know your problem,

You're too tense.

Someone is holding their head,

Groaning.

But the idea is not to be tense.

What causes tension?

What stops you relaxing?

You find when you're really trying hard,

When you're struggling to try and get somewhere,

When you're really working hard to achieve something,

That makes you tense.

And imagine if you sat here with nothing to achieve,

Nowhere to go,

No job to finish,

Then when there's nothing pulling you into the future,

When there's nothing dragging you to the party,

Imagine you,

Your body,

Your mind with these two strings or ropes,

One of them is dragging you into the future,

The other one is holding you back in the past,

That's where the tension comes from.

But imagine if you cut those two ropes,

So you've got no connection to the past,

No attachment to the future,

So you're just in this moment,

Not really concerned about where you came from,

What happened here,

With no problems to solve from the past,

No work to do,

Trying to fix up what went wrong in the past.

All of that is totally gone,

Finished.

You're separated from that.

And there's no fear or anxiety about the future,

Where you have to get to,

What you have to achieve,

How you're going to cope with what's going to happen next,

There's nothing pulling you off into the future,

There's nothing stretching you.

It means there's no tension inside your mind.

Which means your mind can relax.

And when you relax like that,

If you've ever just been working really hard or done some exercise,

Played some tennis or swimming,

And then afterwards you just go and sit on the bench or sit in a nice comfy chair and just relax.

When you do something like that,

How do you feel?

It's something which we know is a pleasure of relaxation.

And that's important,

I keep on stressing this point,

Maybe I don't stress enough,

To when you are physically relaxed,

To notice it,

To cherish it,

To enjoy it,

What does it feel like when your body is totally relaxed?

Aches,

Pains,

Tightness has disappeared,

It's very,

Very enjoyable.

And once you can get into the pleasure of relaxation physically,

Then you get the idea of by letting go of the past and letting go of the future,

You are not stretching the mind and your mind gets relaxed as well,

It gets very peaceful,

Which is what we're trying to do in this meditation.

And then we get the other stressful activity,

Is thinking.

Sometimes people say that thinking is fun,

It's not,

It keeps going on and on and on,

And sometimes it tires your poor brain so much.

If somebody invented a speed camera which would notice and check the speed of your brain,

Then you would all be fine for thinking too fast and thinking too much,

Especially on the weekend when you're supposed to be relaxing,

You will get double demerit fines for how much you think and worry on the weekends.

So we're trying here to let go of all that thinking,

Which is the other major bit of stress in your mind,

Having to solve problems.

Don't you remember what it was like at school when you had to think and solve a problem and find an answer otherwise you get into trouble with your teacher?

Those teachers,

They really stopped so many natural meditators,

Many of you,

I know many people,

They were just so good when they were kids.

When the teacher asked,

What do you think about this,

They said,

Nothing ma'am,

And they got into trouble for that.

They could have been enlightened beings,

Great meditators,

They had this mandal ability just to be empty and to be free and the teacher spoiled it.

Anyway,

Now you can still do that.

To let go of thinking,

What does that mean?

You don't have to give a name for things.

You don't have to work out the consequences.

You don't have to find out even the meaning of life through thinking about it.

There's one famous sculptor,

Rodin's Thinker,

If you know that,

A very famous sculptor in western culture,

He's got his head in his hand like this.

His head is so heavy,

Has to support it with his fist because that's the only way,

It's so heavy with thinking.

But does the Buddha statue ever need to support his head with his hand?

No,

Because it's so light,

It's like an empty balloon,

It just lifts itself up.

So now that is like a meditator's head.

Light,

Empty and free,

Relaxed.

It's a wonderful thing that with,

Especially with people from western countries,

To teach them how to be aware without thinking.

When they actually get it,

What a wonderful freedom that is.

And that's an old trick but here it comes again,

Many of you have done this trick before.

If you think that this cannot be done,

If you think,

Well,

If I'm thinking I'm unconscious,

I can't find this middle way between being silent and aware without a thought going on in the mind,

This is how it's done.

So you can actually teach this to your friends,

It's very simple to do.

As I am speaking,

I also want you to be aware of your reaction in your own mind as I'm speaking.

So don't just listen to what I'm saying,

Just how does it react in your mind?

Because as I am speaking,

You will begin to notice there are several pauses between my words,

In the spaces between my words.

What was going on inside your head?

There it was again,

You were silent and fully aware without a thought going on in your head.

Isn't that wonderful?

You can do it,

You are silent and aware at the same time with no thoughts.

It's such a relief,

It's so relaxing just to be aware without having to think.

And you will discover one of the great truths of meditation,

That in that silent mind,

You understand so much more,

You see much deeper and further in silence than you ever do through thinking,

Which is why,

Certainly in Buddhism,

All wisdom comes from the silent mind.

All peace of mind is experienced in silence and there it was again.

So you're relaxing,

Relaxing this body so it's nice and at ease,

Relaxing this mind so it's not caught up,

It's not captured in a better way.

The past and the future try and capture you and bring you back into time or propel you off into something in the future which probably will never happen anyway.

That's why my saying is don't worry about the future,

Whatever you're worried about will happen,

It won't happen,

It's usually something much worse.

It's not the same.

So don't worry about the future,

Who knows what's going to happen.

Instead,

Don't allow yourself to be captured by the past,

Imprisoned by the past or captured by the future.

Be free in this moment and see if you can learn just how to be silent,

To really relax the mind.

How you do this,

You don't just say,

I'm going to be quiet,

Come on,

Be quiet,

I'm not going to think,

Shut up.

That is force,

That's no way to relax anybody.

So relaxation of the body is when you let go of trying to hold the body this way or that way,

When you find comfort in the body,

That's a relaxed body.

The same thing happens with your mind.

A relaxed mental world is when it's nice and loose and easy.

You're not giving it orders,

You're not trying to control it.

You're not treating your mind like a slave.

I like that sort of simile because so often when people meditate,

They try and control their mind.

Telling it what to do,

Ordering it,

Forcing it.

They do treat it like some sort of slave or servant,

They can order around and tell what to do.

And of course it doesn't relax that way.

You got to learn how to be a friend to your mind.

Be kind to it.

Let it relax.

If you got a boss at work who's always shouting at you and telling you what to do,

It makes you so tense,

You can't relax and do the best work.

Alternatively you may have a boss who's a really good friend and who's just so kind to you,

Relax so much in their presence that your work is really great.

Learn how to relax by not being a boss over your own mind.

Be kind,

Relax,

Let it be.

And if you're bossy inside,

Your meditation will go nowhere.

So you work with your mind,

You don't work against it,

You don't tell it what to do.

You're kind to it and it relaxes by itself.

Once the mind gets relaxed,

It becomes very pleasant,

Just like the body is relaxed,

It's pleasant.

No aches,

No pains anywhere,

No irritations,

The body is just really really comfortable.

And your mind,

You haven't got these tensions of having to solve some problem,

Fix up some mistake of the past or have some worry about the future.

All those sources of tension and tightness have vanished.

You can have peace of mind.

And later on in the meditation,

That peace,

That relaxation,

It doesn't just stay there.

It's just like a tree which grows and grows and grows,

Stronger with more leaves,

With more flowers,

With more fruits,

It actually develops.

Stillness gets deeper and deeper and deeper,

More and more powerful,

More and more joyful,

And that's where you get into the juicy part of meditation.

That's where things really start to get delightful,

Even ecstatic,

And you start to understand why people become monks and nuns.

Some people say,

It's such a tough life,

Why did you become a monk?

And the answer is accurate,

For the fun of it.

Hee hee hee hee hee,

And now you will discover what I meant by the fun of a monk,

The peace and joy of meditation.

So there we go,

That's a nice introduction.

So let's get started.

So if you'd like to,

If you've been a bit sitting down for too long,

You want to stand up.

Okay,

I'm going to teach by example,

Because I don't need to,

But I'm going to stand up and stretch.

Come on.

Come on,

Stretch the old bones.

Very good,

When you're ready.

If you're really too old,

Then don't do that,

Because otherwise you can't get up,

And when you get up you can't get down again,

When you're down you can't get up again.

So if you are,

Once you're down,

Stay down.

Here we go.

So relaxation 101.

Close your eyes first of all.

Is that something you don't have to worry about,

Looking at things?

Most people who come to meditation retreats are very old anyway,

So it's not worth looking at them.

Nothing to see.

Close your eyes.

As soon as your eyes are closed,

You do become much more sensitive to your bodily feelings.

You're not distracted by all these sights,

So you can feel.

Once you start to feel your body,

We do the coarse adjustments first of all.

Real things like just adjusting your legs.

So right now I've got my right foot stuck under my left thigh,

So I'm going to just move it,

Adjust it,

Otherwise it will start to ache later on.

And you check just your bottom of the seat,

Make sure you wiggle,

You can fidget,

Especially fidgeting at the beginning,

It's an investment,

It means less fidgeting later on.

And there's no perfect posture which suits everybody.

Even me,

My posture changes from day to day,

Week to week.

The one which works the best is not the one which I worked the best yesterday.

Always got to a change,

Adapt.

Once you have most of the body comfortable,

Stay with the body,

Want to relax it even deeper.

So then I go to some of the internal feelings of my body.

And maybe some indigestion,

Maybe some aches,

Maybe some sicknesses and irritation of the throat or sinuses or headache,

Whatever it is.

You can relax those internal feelings as well by the simple process of being aware of them and being kind,

Looking upon them with the kindness of someone who really cares for their own body.

Because when you experience kindness,

You do actually relax.

So be kind to your body and the body relaxes,

It opens up.

Tensions are released.

Lots of pain expand and they loosen and heal.

Just staying with your body,

If there is any part of it which is not relaxed,

Focus just on that one part of the body.

Keep your mindfulness there and just wait for it to relax.

And as it does relax,

You start to experience the pleasure of relaxation.

This is the same type of pleasure which many people can recognize.

It's like being cozy in bed.

Wake up in the morning,

You don't have to go to work.

It's a really nice soft pillow and warm blankets and it's so warm and nice and cozy,

You don't want to go anywhere.

It's a pleasure of relaxation after a good night's sleep.

See if you can notice some of that pleasure now.

Of a body which is relaxed and at ease.

Strange as it may seem,

Once you get to know that pleasure,

The relaxation goes deeper.

It's like the mind sees something enjoyable and by itself goes deeper to get more.

You relax more fully than any other time.

And you continue relaxing,

Enjoying the pleasure of ease and going deeper,

Just with your body.

Restless rest.

Summit reading Once your body is really relaxed,

Then the next thing is to relax your mental world.

So don't fight the sound of the neighbour doing his sawing.

If you fight anything,

You get more tense.

Make your mind very soft,

Soft so when something hits it,

It doesn't shatter and break.

And if you have something in the past which is bothering you,

Feel the pull of that past,

The old memory,

The old hurt or pain,

That causes tension.

So see if you can imagine untying yourself from the past,

As if what happened,

Happened to another person,

It's none of your business.

So you can be free from the tension of the past,

Pulling you back.

And then sometimes you can feel the future trying to capture you,

Trying to pull you into figuring out what's going to happen next and how you're going to deal with it.

All those plans and anxieties,

They also cause a tightness,

A tension in your mental world.

Don't let the future capture your attention.

Don't be bothered with the future.

Stay here.

If you make peace,

Kindness now,

You have such good health,

Strength and wisdom,

You will be able to deal with anything in the future by what you make right now.

So you keep all of your awareness in the now.

There's no need to use this present moment awareness to go thinking about all sorts of stuff.

You want to find the truth,

Be wise,

Understand the emotions of kindness,

Even love,

Especially peace of mind.

Be silent.

There's no need to disturb your own mind with a thought.

You can imagine your mind like a lake of water in the mountains and any thoughts,

Imagine those like waves on the surface of the lake,

Preventing the lake from being still and preventing a clear image of the truth being reflected in the glass,

Mirror-like surface of the lake.

Imagine a mind like a lake and keep it still.

It's called relaxing the mind.

And don't worry about the time.

Time only exists when you start thinking of the future or you start lingering in the past.

When you're in this moment,

All meditation is only one moment long,

The now.

And the tension caused by time disappears.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

Be in the now and be free of the tyranny of the clock.

It is getting close to the end of the meditation now.

How do you feel?

How much mental relaxation,

Otherwise known as peace of mind,

How much have you developed?

And how much can you enjoy it?

I will now ring the gong three times.

When the third ringing of the gong disappears,

That is a signal to open your eyes and end the meditation.

For those of you who don't know the end of this period of meditation,

Which is streamed live,

The most inactive live streaming on the internet,

We do have some Q&A,

Some of it comes from overseas,

So we'll have the overseas questions first and if anyone has another question they can ask themselves in a moment or two's time.

Three questions from France,

Thailand and Poland.

For France first of all,

My sleepy-tation,

Hehe,

Looks like meditation,

Although I know and I'm convinced that the way to achieve meditation is by letting go,

My way of letting go feels very shallow and very intellectual.

Is it possible what we call the self,

Feeling threatened by complete letting go,

Struggling in such a manner that it trick itself,

Is the only way to put down all the barricades of the self is to weaken them and time will do the rest?

It is true,

It is the sense of self which is always afraid of letting go,

Which always wants to control things.

It is the control which builds up your sense of ego.

Every time you do something,

It adds to that idea of a me and a mine.

However,

The point is that letting go is the key but to be able to let go is a very difficult thing to do.

It takes a lot of skill to press the right buttons to let go.

Today,

I was,

Little bit of teaching about how to let go of the past and the future and encouraging you to do that for the purpose of relaxation.

We know how to let go of physical things,

Like tensions in the body and I was using that ability which most people have to relax their own body,

Use that same ability to relax the mind which is letting it go.

At first one may become sleepy which is caused by the fact that most people in our Western world with very busy lifestyles have what we call sleep deficit.

Basically you don't sleep enough in your daily lives that when it's time to meditate,

When you get quiet and relaxed,

The brain takes the opportunity to catch up.

It's one of the reasons why for a person in France,

If you can get on a retreat,

Do a few days of meditation.

The first couple of days allow yourself to be sleepy,

Catch up on the sleep and then afterwards you can do this letting go and it's not the sleep-utation anymore,

It's the ecstasy-tation meditation.

You can still keep that quietness and that stillness,

It's beautiful,

It's delightful.

So your way of letting go feels very shallow and intellectual,

Starts off with being intellectual,

An idea,

But every idea is just a signpost to an actual experience.

So we find out what that experience is,

We get to know the feeling of letting go rather than the thought of letting go.

The thought is a signpost,

A direction,

Where does it point to?

When we feel where it points to,

What letting go truly is,

Then we can recognize it because as soon as you experience that letting go,

You always experience the associated freedom,

Lightness,

Peace,

It just comes automatically.

So this is the way we feel our way into meditation.

We never think our way through meditation,

We feel it.

And as we get deeper into meditation,

Our ability to feel our way into deeper and deeper states of peace gets more,

More refined,

More experienced.

So that's actually the way to do the letting go.

It may be a tough thing to do but it's worthwhile doing it and you have to go through sleepiness sometimes.

From Thailand,

How do we deal skilfully with positive excitement when we're about to meditate and during the meditation?

The excitement before we sit meditation can stem from utmost happiness,

From a chance to meditate with our favourite monk or nun or from listening to inspirational talks and the excitement during meditation come from seeing these nimittas,

These lights in the mind which come up later on.

The excitement is a natural phenomena,

The energy is coming up and you're getting somewhere in the meditation.

But you know the excitement,

Just like the word,

It's not accurately according to English,

But excite means looking outside this moment.

So instead of getting excite,

It's insight,

We look into things rather than outside of things.

And excited is when a lot of times the experience we have now,

We think,

Ah,

This is it,

Something good is going to be happening now.

It's working and it's actually looking for the future.

Excitement is actually the mind moving off into the next moment.

So if you can,

Sharpen up the focus into the present moment and keep that throughout the meditation,

Then excitement doesn't arise.

You have the energy but not the disturbance.

Just so you can see that,

We're going to meditate,

Yeah,

We're going to meditate in the future,

The next minute or two,

That's what excitement is.

So sharpen the focus in the present moment,

Let go of the future so the future doesn't drag you with excitement into something that hasn't come yet and then you'll be at peace.

And lastly from Poland,

During meditation,

When my meditation deepens,

I start to feel fearful and then your talk comes back,

Why does this happen?

This is a common problem with people.

It's a good problem though,

If fear comes up in the meditation,

Great,

You're getting somewhere,

You're getting to number one,

A place you've never been before and that's always scary.

But please take it from me,

Have some confidence,

I know what I'm talking about.

I'm pretty well known as a meditation teacher throughout the world and when it does have some fear,

It means that something's really good going to happen.

Go through the fear and it's always beautiful on the other side.

So first of all,

You're going to a place you've never been before.

I know all those places in meditation,

They're always beautiful,

Wonderful,

Great and you have a wonderful time,

You have lots of happiness,

Lots of peace,

Good health,

There's no danger at all.

This is the safest thing you can do in the whole universe,

Is to sit down and meditate.

So because of this,

You don't have to have fear,

Have some faith first of all,

Confidence,

The monks like me know what we're talking about.

So fear comes up,

Keep on going,

It's going to be great,

This is a sign that something's wonderful is going to happen.

A good simile which I was reminded of is when a flower blooms,

Just before the flower blooms,

When it's in the bud,

Inside you've got all these petals,

All folded up,

You know,

Expanding and growing and the pressure inside gets very,

Very strong until eventually there's so many petals inside the bud,

They build up the power and the bud splits and the flower blooms.

It's a beautiful idea of like just before giving birth to the flower,

It's always that tightness,

That tension,

Sometimes that's the fear in meditation,

The tightness of something about to happen,

Just hang in there,

Don't do anything,

Don't disturb,

You break through the fear and you get something very beautiful.

The other thing is the same type of fear which people have in prison when they've been in jail for 20,

30 years and tomorrow they're going to be free.

That is very scary for any prisoner who's been institutionalised for such a long time.

You know from experience it's great being outside of jail,

Being free.

So that's the same with the fear which comes up in the meditation.

There's a jail,

You've been living in for a long time and you're about to leave.

That's the fear.

When you recognise it like that,

To hell with the fear,

I'm going for it,

I want to be free.

So that's from Poland.

So three questions,

Has anyone got any questions from our home audience?

I have to ask this cos many years ago,

I always ask the ones on the internet first of all,

Someone actually sitting over there,

They got out their little phone and they typed in a question and they pretended it was from Indonesia,

Cos they said that's the only way I can get a question asked in here.

They actually did that,

They confessed afterwards.

So has anyone got any questions here about their meditation?

Okay,

You'll have one in a few minutes when we finish.

If there is any questions you want to ask,

And like usually people get a bit scared of asking a question in public,

There's a little box on the table on every Saturday and you can write a question down,

You can write it at home in your own time and leave it in the box over there and it will be answered on Saturday after that.

Excellent.

Okay,

So now we're going to break and we usually do a little bit of bowing first of all to get some exercise but actually paying respects to Buddha,

Dhamma,

Sangha and then we can go and do what we need to do.

For those of you who are staying,

We're going to get a memorial service at half past four for one of our old members who died overseas.

That's coming in about 20 minutes time.