Day 008/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

This class is the ongoing class in meditation,

Where every Saturday afternoon we focus on a different aspect of meditation rather than the general practice of meditation.

So that people can come week after week and learn a little bit more about what happens in meditation.

And it's always a case it seems,

Me talking about some of the beginning parts of meditation,

I always think that one of these days on these classes you should talk about the deepest states of meditation and why not today.

And so those deepest states of meditation,

Once you start to get still in the mind,

You start to get some joy coming up.

I think the last time I was here,

I was mentioning just the connection between stillness,

Mindfulness and happiness.

It is,

Everyone keeps talking about mindfulness,

Buddhism has been practicing for 2500 years but only now people start talking about it,

Just taking it aside and not seeing it in its full contexts.

But the mindfulness gets stronger and stronger the more still you are.

Because every time you do something,

You actually weaken the power of mindfulness.

Every time even you think,

Make a decision,

You find that the mindfulness gets weaker.

And this you'll be able to see for yourself.

When your mind is still,

You become awake and everything looks brighter,

Clearer,

Simply because more energy is going into your mind.

And as the stillness makes you more mindful,

It also brings you more joy and happiness.

Until you get to these states in meditation where you feel very happy,

You get delight in whatever you observe.

And that's the state when you are even just watching your body,

Your body feels so relaxed,

It's at ease,

It's delightful.

And if you're watching the breath,

The breath go in and out,

It becomes a very delightful thing to watch.

You can watch your breath for long periods of time simply because you are happy doing it.

You don't force the mind to watch something which is enjoyable,

It does it by itself.

And that delight which comes up in the meditation is an important thing to notice that shows you you're really getting into this meditation practice.

And it also means you can meditate for long periods of time.

I'm talking a couple of hours simply because you're enjoying it.

And of course time vanishes.

When I say meditating for long periods of time,

I'm saying that for you it doesn't appear any time at all.

You are perfectly awake,

You're not asleep,

You're not blanked out,

Perfectly awake,

But because when you get to those states of meditation you're perfectly poised in the present moment,

There is no even concept of time.

Afterwards I always started to analyse why is it in those states you have no feeling of time at all.

And it's obvious that to have a perception of time you have to have a measurement from the past to the present,

Past to the future or present to the future.

Time is a measurement.

You need some past or some future as well as the present moment to have that.

When the past and the future have totally vanished from you,

They've fallen off your radar as they say.

For you meditating there is no past,

There is no future,

It's just what is happening now.

And even because you can't measure at all,

The usual experience one has of time totally disappears.

You're just here.

And so it could be half an hour,

An hour,

Two hours,

It doesn't make any difference at all to you.

Just like exactly the same.

So you get into a timeless state and also you get into a very happy state.

There's so much bother and trouble has just disappeared.

You are content.

Now when one gets into that stage of delightful meditation,

Sometimes that's all I ever teach is to get that far but I want to say what happens next because that's really important too,

To actually know what happens next.

Because many of you will get into that state of sitting here just happy to meditate,

Very content and actually experience some pleasure with whatever you happen to be watching.

I'll just give another little example.

Sometimes monks meditate on things like skulls.

I've got a skull in my room,

An old human skull which somebody gave me.

And it's not just to ward off burglars because that's also a good thing.

You have a skull in the room and as soon as they come in they see the skull.

That usually pretty freaks out the burglars and they run away.

So it's not just for that,

It's usually a common meditation object and I loan it out to other monks if they want to keep my skull for a little while just to meditate.

So they do,

They focus on the skull and they visualize it until that skull can actually,

They can visualize it without it being in front of them and they focus on that.

It's not just to get real about their own physical body but what happens often,

Especially with the skull contemplation is they're watching and visualizing that skull and that skull becomes very bright and beautiful.

It becomes absolutely delightful,

Like it's glowing,

It's fluorescing.

That's just a common occurrence which happens in meditation.

And the reason is,

Is because the mind is now delightful,

The mindfulness is strong enough,

You've got enough energy in the mind that whatever you are aware of is beautiful.

And that is the stage,

Delightful breath you can call it or delightful skull,

Delightful body,

Whatever it is,

When you start getting happiness and joy in your meditation and time is vanishing.

From that point,

What happens next?

All of that delight,

That strong mindfulness,

That stillness,

It all comes about by you just being very passive,

Not interfering with the process,

By you letting go.

Letting go of what?

Letting go of the thing which keeps interfering in meditation.

Letting go of that backseat driver to your mind.

That's what you let go of.

You keep that thing calm.

And as you get more still,

The joy increases and so does the mindfulness.

Your meditation gets in some very happy states and you become super aware and super still as well.

At times in the meditation you think you can't get more peaceful than this and then you go into a more peaceful level.

You're really exploring places you've never been to before,

Which means that very often two obstacles appear in meditation and that is the fear or the excitement.

For those of you who have read the Buddha's teachings,

You find these in the Upakalayasas Sutta,

The deep defilements which stop you getting deeper into the very powerful meditations.

Fear and excitement are the main ones.

And how do you overcome those fear and excitement?

If at that time it comes up and you try and do anything,

You are disturbing the process and it all falls apart.

If you don't do anything,

It falls apart anyway.

Both ways you are stuffed if it comes up.

The only way to do that is to train yourself beforehand,

To be prepared what to do when you get excited or you get afraid.

And the simile which I often bring up on retreats and I like teaching in similes because they are more potent than mere words.

When you put a visualisation or a picture to the words,

It's much more powerful.

You can remember it and you can understand it much better.

And that is the simile of my master Ajahn Chah sitting by the still forest pool.

In the old days when there was jungle in Thailand,

The only jungle they got in Thailand now is a concrete jungle.

You would be able to go walking into the jungles for days,

Go to villages for alms food.

And in the morning,

In the afternoon,

Sorry,

Late afternoon,

You would always try and find a lake or a river and just you would camp close by as a wandering monk,

As a homeless monk.

And you put your mosquito net umbrella maybe 10-20 meters from the edge.

You wash,

Have a bath because it's always really hot and then take some water,

Filter some water for drinking and then just go,

Set up in your mosquito net and meditate for most of the night,

Go to sleep maybe 11-12 o'clock.

But often,

Like Ajahn Chah,

You would keep your eyes open instead of closing them when meditating because when it got to twilight,

The jungle animals would come out to that lake or that river to drink.

But if you moved,

If you even made a sound,

Those jungle animals would know there was a human being.

And for them,

Human beings usually meant hunters and they were very dangerous.

The animals would sense a human being there and would run off back into the jungle and not come out at all even if they were thirsty.

They were scared of humans.

So the only way they would come out was Ajahn Chah had to sit perfectly still,

Neither afraid nor excited,

But still.

To the point where the animals would not know there was a human watching.

And then they would come out.

They would come and drink,

Maybe come with their young and play by the still forest pool only when the one who was watching,

Ajahn Chah,

Was perfectly still.

And then after the ordinary jungle animals would come out,

Sometimes the very strange and weird animals would come out,

Incredibly beautiful which very few people had ever seen.

They were so sensitive to the presence of a human that Ajahn Chah had to be really still for those to come out and play in the still forest pool.

And that was the simile which I heard from Ajahn Chah myself,

The simile of what to do in the deep meditation states.

You have a delightful breath or watching a skull and it's delightful or whatever else it is you're doing.

Once that starts to disappear,

Incredible things come up into your mind.

We call those the nimitta,

The lights in the mind.

It's like the animals coming out of the bush to actually to drink in the evening.

If you want them to come and stay,

You have to be perfectly still.

If a light appears in the mind,

It's as if the light can't see you watching,

The one who's observing has to be perfectly,

Totally still.

And any excitement,

Any fear,

Any wow,

That little nimitta will rush away,

Disappear and never come back again for days or even months.

You have to be perfectly still.

And that was a very great help for me because instead of just saying,

Oh let go,

Be still,

I could imagine myself being like an Ajahn Chah in the jungle,

Imagine these animals coming and just being perfectly still,

Not moving anything in the body or in the mind and then they would come and stay.

That's what they did.

And sometimes when those ordinary animals had come,

Those are the nimittas,

These incredible lights,

Then the amazing ones come out,

The ones which few people ever know about.

These are the deep jhanas,

These incredible states of meditation,

But they only come when you're perfectly still.

Because they are so,

As it were,

Scared.

If they think you're watching,

If they think you're doing anything,

If they sense there's somebody around,

They will never come.

That's why you have to be perfectly still.

And that's a very,

Very helpful teaching about what to do when you get to the deep stage of meditation,

To be still.

But then people say,

Yes,

But I can't help myself,

I get excited,

These are powerful states of mind,

What should I do?

And then you come across the answer of what I call programming,

Your mindfulness.

And this works the very best,

It's most powerful for the deeper states of meditation.

If you get,

Say,

Lights coming up in your mind at that particular stage,

Very,

Very peaceful,

Very delightful,

I'm not talking about the lights which come up early on in the meditation,

They're not what I'm talking about,

Incredible,

Amazing stuff which happens when you're really still,

When you're really into it.

When those lights come up,

The only way to actually to stop the excitement or the fear,

If that's what's been happening before,

Programming mindfulness at the very beginning of your meditation.

If you really think you got a good chance of getting to a deep meditation today,

You know that your meditation is going well,

Your body feels good,

You've got the time,

Everything,

All the causes seem to be in place,

If you think you're going to get a deep one now,

Close your eyes,

Relax the body.

Now when you have a little bit of mindfulness,

You don't need much for this,

Then you make a resolution to yourself.

You say,

For example,

If a nimitta comes up,

This beautiful light appears,

I will not be afraid.

If the light appears,

I will not be afraid.

If the light appears,

I will not be afraid.

That's all.

But you listen to it,

You pay 100% attention to what you're saying,

Or thinking rather,

And then you forget about it.

And you carry on with your normal meditation.

You put a program into your mind,

Conditioning,

Self-hypnosis,

I don't know what you call it but it works.

And it's amazing just how effective that is.

You forget you've ever said that,

Because it's gone into your subconscious mind.

And then you're getting into the deep meditations,

You're very,

Very still,

All the thoughts have vanished,

You're in the moment,

Watching the breathing usually,

Beautiful breath,

And the breath starts to vanish.

The beautiful light comes in the mind.

Usually you'll be afraid,

But that's when the instruction you gave in the middle,

At the beginning,

Kicks in.

Sub-verbally,

Without you doing anything,

Without you thinking,

You don't get afraid.

This beautiful light which has agitated you before,

Just comes and stays,

Because you've trained your mind with that simple technique of programming mindfulness,

Just to let these things be.

Or if the problem is excitement,

Many times people on that stage,

Their heart starts pounding.

And it's involuntary,

It just happens,

You're getting excited,

You're getting into a great state of meditation,

Your heart is beating very strong.

You tell yourself at the beginning of a meditation,

If you think this is going to happen,

When the beautiful nimittas come,

My heart will be peaceful,

It will not beat fast.

When the nimittas come up,

My heart will be peaceful.

When the nimittas come up,

My heart will be peaceful.

In your own words,

It's amazing,

Just your heart starts to become agitated,

Beat strong,

That little instruction comes in and settles it down by itself.

You don't do anything.

Important thing is,

At that stage,

If you do anything,

You disturb everything.

You have to do it before,

Put the instructions in,

Put the programming mindfulness in early,

And then when it's needed,

You will act.

And then these beautiful lights come incredibly strong,

Beautiful,

Powerful,

And also full of great bliss and happiness.

Now you really get into this meditation,

It really really makes you very very happy.

You understand just how deep this meditation can go.

And if you're lucky,

You can actually go right in the centre,

And you get a bliss more different,

More beautiful than you've ever had before.

These are the jhanas which you might read about.

Not just monks and nuns,

Lay people to get these things from time to time.

Not that many,

But a few,

And I'm just giving these instructions,

Just in case.

There we go.

Now I should make the announcement again because we're going to do some meditation now.

Since I made the first announcement that more people have come in,

If you come for the introduction to meditation class,

The lessons for beginners in meditation,

You wouldn't have understood a word of what I've been saying the last 15 minutes.

You may think you have,

But you haven't because it's a deep meditation.

If you come for the beginners meditation class,

It's in the room to my right.

This is the ongoing class.

Very good.

So let's go for it.

So if you'd like to get yourself comfortable in your meditation posture,

However that happens to be,

And then we can see how deep we can go in meditation.

Here we go.

And as usual,

I will guide you for the first 10 or 15 minutes and then I'll be silent.

First thing you do after closing your eyes,

Check your body.

How is it sitting?

If you don't put your body in a really good position to start off with,

After 40-45 minutes it will start to wake and disturb your meditation.

Get your body right at the beginning,

It saves you a lot of disturbance later on.

And don't assume that after 30 seconds that you're finished with your body.

I've been meditating,

I was trying to think the other day,

40-45 years?

Yeah,

45 years.

And even I spend at least 3 or 4 minutes,

Sometimes longer with my body,

Making sure it's comfortable.

Sometimes I look for the most prominent feeling,

It usually comes up anyway.

That prominent feeling is a sign that there's some tension,

Tightness,

Pressure on my body.

I don't just be mindful of it,

I do something about it,

I move,

I scratch,

I cough,

I sneeze.

Very good,

Thank you.

So that I can be kind to the body and it feels more relaxed.

After a couple of minutes there's nothing more I can do by moving or scratching.

But there's still some more work to be done.

Now I do the mental calming,

I look at a part of the body which is tight or tense or aching,

I allow my mind to settle on that part of the body.

I'm mindful of it.

And then when I've established mindfulness,

Awareness of the part of my body which is imitating,

I send it kindness,

Compassion,

Real love.

When I send it that compassion,

If it really is compassion,

If it's a real thing,

That part of the body relaxes,

Ever so slightly at first.

I keep piling on the real compassion and that part of the body relaxes.

The irritation lessens,

The ache,

The pain eases.

Kindness relieves the tension and when the tension goes,

Most of the pain goes too.

I use this technique to internally relax my body.

And I stay with this for another one or two minutes at least,

Depending on just the state of my health,

Of energy,

Tiredness,

Whatever.

And with experience and know just when I've completed a sort of bodily relaxation.

When it's complete,

My body is relaxed,

It does have a signature happiness,

The delight of relaxation.

I know that happiness.

And I found out that when I'm aware of the delight of relaxation,

When I focus on that,

I relax even more.

Seems like the mind wants pleasure.

If it sees the light anywhere,

It will follow that until it becomes even more delightful.

In this way,

I relax my body deeply before I even start to do anything else with my mind.

If ever I'm tired or ill or I want to go to bed at night and I want to have a sleep,

I just do that much,

Go that far to the delightful relaxation and then I go off to sleep.

It's a very beautiful way of curing things like insomnia.

Once my body is relaxed,

Feel that delight,

Now I can let the body go and I can attend to my mental world,

The world of thoughts,

The past and future,

Disappointments and hopes,

All that stuff which is a very noisy part of one's world.

Now I try to calm the whole world down,

My mental world.

And for most people,

The first obstacles they have to calmness in their mental world is their past and future.

There are many things which hold one back,

Which drag you off into what happened earlier on today or this week or early on in this year.

What we call,

What people call unfinished business,

But it is finished,

What's done is finished.

But sometimes it's very painful,

Sometimes you're obsessed about the past,

How can you let it go?

You can't just say I'm going to drop it.

You do not have the power to use your will.

Use wisdom power instead.

Whatever has happened to you in the past,

Give it kindness,

Real love,

Compassion.

Just as real compassion takes away the pain in the body,

The real compassion takes away the hardness of the past.

What was a solid problem now tends to dissolve.

Be kind to your past.

Open the door of your heart to your past.

Don't feed it negativity,

Feed it kindness.

And it gets smaller and less of a problem.

Talk about real strong metta,

Compassion.

Until the past is easy to let go of,

However long that takes.

And if there's any fear,

Anxiety for the future,

Some biopsy,

Some court case coming up,

Then send kindness to your future too.

Beautiful love which makes even the most fearful,

The fearful appointments,

Soft,

Peaceful,

Light.

So light becomes your future.

It's easy to drop it.

You give kindness first to soften the past and future.

And then you find it easy to let go.

Doesn't matter how long it takes until you can let go of the past and future so easily and come home into this present moment just to be here.

To a holiday place where you can get away from it all and just be.

Be without past,

Be without future.

Just be right now.

The reason why we go off into thoughts,

Fantasies,

Philosophies is because we don't know how to be in the present moment.

Once again the key is kindness.

Be kind to this moment.

Respect her.

You may not be comfortable,

You may not be peaceful,

You may be scary,

I don't know what your present moment is,

But open the door of your heart,

Of your mind to this moment called now.

Sound of the birds,

Bark of the dog,

My voice,

Heat,

Cold.

Whatever you're experiencing now,

Respect,

Embrace,

Smile at this moment.

Then you find this present moment is easy to be with.

You don't tend to think or fantasize or philosophize or plan.

We're only restless because we're unhappy with present moment.

When you're happy being here,

There's no need to think.

Feel yourself relaxing deeply into this moment.

Not holding this moment with force,

But allowing this moment to be like a beautiful lotus flower which you can hold in the palm of your hand,

Not squashing it,

Not gripping it.

You just rest lightly in the palm of your hand,

This present moment.

And neither does it fall off your hand.

This moment called now is just here,

Here,

Here.

Just be.

And it's a natural phenomena.

It just happens.

And after a while you become aware of your breathing.

You don't care where that breathing is located.

You just tend to know if the breath is going in or the breath is going out.

Don't focus on the breath.

Just let the breath come to you.

Let the breathing fill your mind.

Moment to moment,

Just being with that part of the breathing happening now without giving it a name,

Without controlling it,

Your job is just to watch and be kind,

Never to do anything.

Just being the breath.

And this breath has fed you oxygen all your life,

Taken away the waste products.

When you're sleeping,

When you're busy,

Paying no attention,

Your breath is one of your most faithful servants.

Respect her.

Be kind.

And then your breath will stay with you.

So all you know,

Breath coming in,

Breath going out.

If there are any sounds,

Any feelings in the body,

That's at a distance.

Your center,

The very heart of your mind is just with the breathing.

And everything else is on the edge,

On the edge of the screen,

With the center just occupied by the feeling of breathing right now in silence.

Okay?

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Any questions from here about the meditation today?

Yes.

Oh,

Do you want to.

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Just get the microphone go.

Yeah.

This experience of falling and jerking back,

Is it actually falling asleep?

It can be.

It's what's best described to me,

And it seems inaccurate,

Is you're getting still,

But your mindfulness isn't keeping up with the stillness.

So it's almost like the stills jerk the mindfulness back to get you aware of what's happening again.

So it's something which will happen,

You know,

Feel like you're falling,

But you're not aware enough to really go all the way with it and it jerks back again.

So it's something which will just disappear by itself very quickly.

It's not a big problem in the meditation at all.

Just allow the awareness to get stronger and stronger and stronger,

And all that jerkiness will just tend to vanish by itself.

Basically,

Very common problem,

Not a big one.

But also,

There could be sleepiness,

But never think of sleepiness as something which is bad,

And you're a terrible meditator.

Because the truth is that all of you,

You live very hectic lives,

It's very,

Very tiring,

And rushing around all over the place,

Even on a weekend,

You've got so many things to do on a weekend,

And you are going to be tired.

So that's one of the reasons why to face the problem of tiredness in the meditation,

Please let yourself be tired,

Don't fight it.

And then if you can just be at peace with the tiredness,

It's amazing that this will last that long.

If you fight it,

It will last for a long time.

So just relax,

Even if you want your body to droop.

If you want to droop,

Let it droop.

Many,

Many years ago,

I decided just to give in and just let myself be sleepy.

And my body would droop until one day,

It was drooping,

But I started just leaving it alone,

And the awareness came back and my body straightened up all by itself.

It's one of those weird things that I never told my body to straighten up,

He just did it when it was ready.

And these experiences like that make me trust my body.

If it wants to slump,

You can slump body,

I'm not going to control it.

Then it gets up all by itself.

When you have those experiences of things which you thought you were always in control of do it by themselves,

That's really weird,

But it's good fun.

You know sometimes when you do the walking meditation,

We don't really have the space in here to do walking meditation.

When we do the walking meditation,

Sometimes you're just walking along there and then just the walking happens all by itself.

It's almost like you're not walking,

But the legs are doing the walking.

Just watching these legs move,

You don't tell them to do anything,

You just do it by themselves.

Little things you thought you were in control of,

You let go and it just happens all by itself.

That's why the best way of meditating is to just be peaceful,

Be still and let things happen.

Does that sort of answer your question?

Thank you for asking it.

Does anyone else want to ask a question?

Very good.

Sometimes when I'm concentrating on something really hard,

All of a sudden I notice that when you're sitting straight,

Your awareness seems to be this way and then you go inside and you concentrate and then all of a sudden it feels a bit more like looking where you're falling.

But then if I check the bottom and I can look at the body,

It is still straight.

Sometimes it is and it's down and you pull it back up again.

But very often it feels as if I'm looking in from an inside area of time.

Those are just experiences in meditation,

They're good experiences in meditation.

Sometimes that is a sort of stage where I say that you start to allow your way of looking at things to be a little bit more unconditioned than usual.

We're always so brainwashed,

Culturally conditioned to see things one particular way.

That's very similar to probably one of the next things which will happen to you is you feel like your body is expanding or you're floating up in the air and all that sort of stuff.

And that is when,

It's like this thing we call perception,

The way we look at things in life.

We are so restricted by our culture and now it's like you're letting go and you can start to see things in weird ways.

Don't be afraid of weirdness,

Weirdness is fun.

And after a while it just settles down and just you feel like you're facing up at the ceiling but it's actually just it settles down and it's just normal again.

Sometimes you feel like you're floating up in the air and you just come down again.

You haven't floated,

You haven't levitated,

It just feels that way.

And it's just the way that you perceive is so conditioned that we're breaking those barriers.

You know sometimes that people,

I remember once looking at the wall and it all melted like chocolate on a hot day and it weren't going crazy,

It wasn't taking any hallucinogenic drugs or anything.

All that was happening,

You can see things in a different way than you're supposed to.

And that gives you a little bit of freedom.

So after a while,

Then you just settle down.

And that's fun stuff,

But the really fun stuff is when it all gets nice and peacefully,

You can just watch the breathing or just watch the delightful stuff.

Stage of meditation,

Nothing to worry about,

It's usually a good sign.

You're getting somewhere but don't ever worry about it.

You just,

You come down again.

So there's some good questions today.

Does anyone else want to give me a third good question for today?

There's an old saying that people don't like asking questions because they think they feel stupid if they ask a question in public.

But then you'll find you feel far more stupid afterwards that you didn't ask the question.

I should have asked that question.

So any questions or comments?

Yeah.

When you sounded the gong,

You got the sound,

There was a vibration that went with it.

Like it was sustained?

Yeah,

Good.

That's what happens.

That's why the gong,

We can actually have a really loud bell,

Ding ding ding ding ding ding,

Oh that would be so harsh.

You know,

Buzzer,

Buzz,

Buzz,

Or a siren.

If you're coming out of meditation,

You're so peaceful and so still.

One thing which happens is that because your awareness gets very very strong,

You can hear the sound of the gong so much more deeply than otherwise.

Your ears have actually opened,

Your mind is very strong.

And there are some sounds which you can hear,

Which you only hear in deep meditation.

And the sound of the gong is beautiful.

Over in our retreat center,

Even the gong is a bit rough.

So I'll use one of these singing bowls,

One of these Nepalese singing bowls.

I'll start winding it around,

Mmm,

To get you out of meditation.

That's the very best.

Even this is a bit harsh.

I try my best to ring it softly,

Instead of bang,

Because that really hurts sometimes,

Especially in a nice piece of meditation.

So you have to come out very gently.

That's also,

That's why,

Just a minute or two before,

I just warn you,

So you're about to come out of meditation,

Meditation's about to finish.

So to get people out very gradually.

And that's true for you if you're having a nice meditation at home or anywhere,

Don't just jump up and just rush around.

Because you know you have this beautiful piece,

You want to keep it as long as possible.

And it's also jarring to you if you do something very active,

Straight after meditation.

It's also why,

You know there's a lot of thought goes into these meditation classes.

It's also why at the end of the meditation,

I don't usually let you go for 15 minutes,

Do some questions and answers and then you can go home.

It's actually to take you out of stillness slowly.

When you ever go on a retreat,

I remember telling Nicholas this,

Go on a retreat for 9 days,

Then before you get in your car and drive home,

Go around the car park a few times.

Because you got to deal with the traffic when you leave a retreat,

Your mind is so cool,

Just driving around.

You have accidents that way.

So you got to somehow just make that transition from nice meditation back to,

I wouldn't call it normal life,

Crazy life.

Okay,

Very good.

So enough now,

So thank you all for coming.

During the time,

This is the last time the monks and nuns would come up for Saturday afternoon meditation for 3 months.

We have our retreat time now.

So we stay in our monasteries.

All the monks,

Other monks have a nice time.

I have to teach the monks for the next 3 months.

I still do a bit of work.

But this class Saturday afternoon would be taken by lay people afterwards.

So still here every Saturday afternoon,

But no monks and no nuns.

But still good for everybody.

Please keep coming if you can.

Otherwise you tend to get lazy,

Find other excuses for not meditating.

It's really worth your while.

It's great for your health,

Great for your peace,

Great for your spirituality.

Okay,

So now I'm going to bow to the Buddha,

Dhamma,

Sangha and then we can just relax.