Day 017/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

As more late comers are coming in.

Should we do like I used to do at school?

If you come in late you have to stand in the corner.

That would be a good idea?

Find people,

Put them in detention,

Extra-terminate meditation afterwards.

They don't do that in school anymore.

Okay,

I think enough is enough.

All the important people are in.

So welcome to today's meditation class,

The ongoing class.

For those who have come to the introduction to meditation class,

That is occurring under the room to my right.

The series of four classes for people who have never meditated before.

So if you have meditated before,

This is the class for you.

And during this class every week,

Myself or one of the other monks or nuns,

We'll be teaching you the basics of meditation and giving a guided meditation.

But we usually begin by focusing on one aspect of meditation before we begin.

So it focuses,

Emphasizes on one particular aspect.

And you have to go,

This is the first Saturday since I've come off retreat,

For me anyway.

So I'll go back to the basics.

You all have heard about mindfulness,

You can't go anywhere in any bookshops anymore without having a mindfulness section.

It does remind me of the old story of the man who went into a bookshop and he asked the lady,

Where is the self-help section of the bookshop?

And she said,

So if I told you,

It would defeat the purpose.

But,

That's a joke.

But,

When you go to a bookshop there's so much on mindfulness.

But the most important part about mindfulness is actually where you put your mindfulness on,

Where you direct it.

Everyone is aware but it's actually focusing our awareness on places which are very,

Very useful for the purposes of calm,

Peace and clarity.

And you will soon hear when I do the guided meditation instructions,

The first place to put your mindfulness on,

After you've closed your eyes and sat down,

Is on your body,

To try and develop some awareness of your body.

What do I mean by aware of the body?

Not how thirsty or hungry it is,

Not how big or small it is,

But how relaxed it is or how tense it is.

To have mindfulness of that quality in your body which is relaxation or tension,

Two extremes of the same indicator.

Because the purpose of the beginning of the meditation is to relax the body,

To make it comfortable and at ease.

And even though that's only the first part of the meditation,

It's still so important for people's lives.

I can see that there's so many people just not physically relaxed.

They're so tense.

One of the outcomes of that physical tension is people just can't fall asleep at night.

They have insomnia or they don't sleep well because they go to bed,

Their body is all tight and tense,

Of course they can't sleep well.

And so our first goal in this meditation is learning how to relax the body.

Not just to relax it normally but relax it very deeply.

And it doesn't take that amount of skill to get your body,

You relax it as best you can,

You focus on parts of the body which you can feel with your mindfulness indicator is tense and you can loosen them up,

Relax them,

Bring them to a state of deep ease.

And I often compare it,

Haven't been to a spa ever,

But compare it to what it must be like paying all this money to go to these expensive spas and have hot oil and hot stones and just having massage and hot baths and when you come out after you feel so relaxed.

That costs a lot of money.

Here you can get even deeper at not a mile in the Saturday afternoon and it doesn't cost you a cent.

This is value for money.

Actually value for no money.

But it works and you feel it,

You feel your body really relaxed and open.

And of course with that relaxed open body you can actually feel the body getting very,

Very healthy.

Aches and pains and other difficulties tend to just melt away because in Asian medicine whenever you're really,

Really relaxed,

If it's Chinese,

A qi can flow properly and give you a lot of energy and good healing.

In the Indian they don't call it qi,

They call it the winds.

The winds are vedic,

Winds can flow through your body and not get blocked because you're relaxing your body.

And it feels a lot,

It feels really open,

Very good,

Very healthy and very relaxed.

And that is an important state of the meditation.

But I always like adding a little bit extra.

That state of physical relaxation,

Just by mindful and learning how to relax different parts of the body,

Means you also get this beautiful feeling of delight.

The body actually feels pleasurable.

Everything is just nice,

It's free.

And the same sort of pleasure,

It's hard to find similes.

But you know sometimes after a good night's sleep you wake up in the morning,

You're cozy in bed,

You don't have to get up yet.

You're just lying down,

Enjoying that delightful feeling in your body,

Cozy,

Warm,

Comfortable.

That is this feeling of relaxation which I'm encouraging you to notice.

And an interesting thing happens is once you can notice,

Be aware of the delight of a relaxed body,

How just pleasurable it feels,

You will notice that the relaxation goes even deeper.

The delight just takes you to another level of deep relaxation inside.

So this is what we're doing.

We're putting our mindfulness on the relaxation indicator instead of being stressed.

You all know what stress feels like.

Everything is nice and loose and open,

Nothing is being held tight.

You're not being pulled this way or pushed that way.

You're free.

And once you have that physical relaxation,

You get the pleasure of delight.

Then we go to the next stage of the meditation which is doing the same to your emotional world,

To your mental world.

All these thoughts and concerns and worries and stuff which go on in your head,

Which are so similar to the aches and pains and stresses in your body.

When your body is stressed and tight and tense and inflamed sometimes,

Of course that's very unpleasant and things can't go,

Flow freely through you.

Say with the mind we have like aches and wounds and diseases and stresses in our mental world.

And we,

Because we've just been training,

Relaxing our physical body,

Exactly the same techniques work on your emotional world.

So,

You know,

You're sitting there and some terrible thing happened to you earlier today.

What do you do?

You can feel that,

How tense that makes your mind,

How tight that is,

How stressful that is.

And because you're aware of these indicators,

You're aware that sometimes that stress in the mind gets worse,

It gets more painful or more,

More stressful or sometimes it just relaxes and goes more towards ease.

You see the indicator move,

More stress or more relaxation,

More peace.

And then you use your wisdom,

Your insight,

Happens all the time.

Why?

What attitude did I have which made my mind less stressful,

Which made that event happened earlier today,

Less of a problem?

What did I do?

And you'll always find it is attitudes of letting it go,

Not fighting it,

Being at peace with it,

Being kind to it,

Opening the door of your heart to it,

Compassion,

Making peace with it.

Those are the attitudes which take an emotional block,

An emotional point of stress and relieve it.

And it works so amazingly well.

So just taking the example of something happened in the past,

You just see that and it's really a problem for you.

Feel that problem,

Feel the stress of that problem.

How can I relax that stress?

Be kind to it,

Give it compassion.

And it softens,

Just like a hard lump of pain in the body when you give it kindness,

Mindfulness and kindness,

You can relax it,

You can feel it getting softer and softer and softer.

You can experience just how that pull from the past is like you're being stretched,

You're being extended,

That's what stress is,

You know,

You're pulling at something from both ends.

And when you're watching this mental phenomena,

It's like it's pulling you,

Stretching you and you learn how to let go of both ends.

And everything relaxes like a rope which is not taught anymore because people have let go of the two ends.

It's nice and loose.

So your mental world starts to get more peaceful.

You start to notice the peace indicator or the stress indicator in your mind.

What makes you more peaceful?

What makes you more stressed?

And you soon learn how to move that indicator in the meditation towards more and more ease,

More peace,

More peace,

More peace.

And you know what makes it more stressed?

When you do something,

When you fight,

When you try and control or get rid of stuff,

That makes you very stressed.

So you soon learn feedback,

Cause and effect,

Mindfulness means you're watching the mind,

You're watching the right places,

You soon learn how to relax the mind until it gets very,

Very relaxed.

You're not fighting anything,

You're not making peace,

You're being kind,

You're being gentle.

And the mind feels so relaxed and peaceful.

And it also feels delightful.

The delightful mind,

Relaxed,

Not a care in the world because you've softened all those cares that pass and future away.

You're peaceful.

It feels good.

And once you notice the delight of a peaceful mind,

The peace goes even deeper.

That's why it's good to enjoy the meditations.

But as you'll see when I do the guided meditation,

After a while,

A lot of people,

They just can't maintain.

I don't know why it is.

They're getting really peaceful and calm,

But they still want to do stuff and mess it all up.

So I will introduce during the course of the meditation,

Just,

Okay,

Now become aware of your breathing.

Because the breathing,

Sometimes the breathing is rough,

Sometimes it's smooth,

Sometimes it's long,

Sometimes it's short.

The breathing can give you an indication of how your mental world is.

You know,

When you get angry,

You breathe very,

Very fast.

You know,

When you relax,

Your breath is very slow.

So the breathing is also an indicator of how tense you are.

So during the meditation,

I'll ask you or suggest to you,

You don't have to follow orders.

They're not orders,

They're just suggestions,

Directly to start being aware of your breathing.

By which I mean,

What are you doing,

Breathing in or breathing out,

Which one is it?

How do you know?

Some sort of sensation,

Feeling somewhere in your body,

I don't care where,

Which tells you what your breath is up to.

That's what you watch.

And see how you can relax that breath.

Relax it to the max,

As everything gets very peaceful and calm and still and beautiful.

And that becomes our meditation.

See how still you can be,

How peaceful.

Get those indicators all moving to stillness and peacefulness with your mindfulness.

So easy.

So now we will give it a try.

So those of you who've been sitting down a long time,

You can always stand up and stretch your legs or whatever you need to do.

For those of you who are comfortable,

You get yourselves in your meditation stool,

Cushions,

Chairs,

Wherever you're sitting,

Make yourself as comfortable as you possibly can.

And I should also say,

Because some people came late,

That this is the ongoing class of meditation.

Those who come for the introduction to meditation class,

That is in the room to my right.

We're going to be sitting for about 45 minutes,

So that might be a bit long if you've just come to meditation for the first time.

But anyway,

Let's see what happens.

Make sure your mobile phones and other stuff which make noises are turned off.

And as you close your eyes,

You're taking like me,

Yawn or breathing deeply,

And just really get the body superficially relaxed.

So the first aim of the meditation is to be comfortable on your chair,

On your stool,

On your cushion,

Wherever you are seated.

If you're leaning against the wall,

Just make sure your back is just really comfortable against that wall.

And because many people fidget,

Because their bottoms are sore,

Pay extra attention to your contact between the bottom and the chair or the stool or the cushion,

Whatever it is.

Make sure that that is really,

Really well prepared.

Close your eyes but not hold them down tight,

Just very softly closed.

Now become aware of your body,

Especially notice whether it's tense,

How tense it is,

How relaxed it is.

And you should be able to be aware of a part of your body,

Just one part of it,

Which is the most tense or irritating or even in pain.

Be aware of that part.

See what makes that less tense,

Less irritating,

What makes it more relaxed and more at ease.

You're being mindful of one part of your body which is the most irritating.

To me it's my nose now,

It's just a bit blocked.

As if I'm just focusing on that one area to the exclusion of everywhere else.

I'm noticing just the tension and experimenting.

What makes that tension,

That tightness in my nose get less?

What makes it worse?

There's a certain type of mental attitude which I call letting be.

Sometimes I call it kindness.

That is what makes the irritation less.

And I apply it,

Always noticing the feedback,

This little indicator of calm,

Ease increasing and the stress and irritation get less.

Sometimes it might take many minutes,

I don't care.

All the time I'm getting more relaxed,

More peaceful,

All the time it feels better and better.

And if it needs a scratch or a cough,

Please do that,

That's important too.

Once one area of my body has been relaxed,

Then I can put my mindfulness on another area and do the same.

See how intense the irritation is.

See what I can do by an attitude of mind to relax that irritation.

And in my own little world here,

Not disturbed by others,

I can give this process the attention it deserves and the time to get some results.

I can feel my head clearing up,

I can feel my throat relaxing.

And I continue until the job is done,

Until that part of the body is relaxed as much as I can make it.

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I want you already,

You can spend more time on your body if you wish.

If you now want to do the same thing to your emotional world,

Your inner world,

Be aware of your mental world,

Notice how many tight spots there are in it.

Let the mind choose one,

Maybe from the past or a fear of the future.

Let the mind stay with that pain,

Feel the tightness,

Stress indicator,

See what you need to do to relax that emotional stress.

How to soften the problem,

To ease it like you're massaging a painful knot of stress in the body.

You're doing this just with your mind,

To ease a painful memory from the past or a terrible fear for the future.

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Once one memory from the past or fear from the future has been dealt with,

Do with another till your whole past gets softened.

Your whole future becomes not a problem anymore,

Relaxed,

Open,

Free,

So you can rest in this present moment,

The place where the future is made,

Resting in this moment,

Having softened the past and the future.

And you feel how relaxed are you in this moment,

How tense,

And see what you need to do to make this moment more comfortable and more clear.

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Know how you are feeling,

How peaceful did you become,

How still are you?

This is a result of meditation.

Just enjoy for another few seconds.

So now,

Ring the bell three times.

Third ringing of the gong,

Come out from your meditation.

Excellent.

So now,

This eighth afternoon,

If the live streaming actually worked,

We could have some questions from around the world.

This class is world famous.

People in many different countries listen to it,

So now we'll see if there's any questions while we're waiting.

Is there any comments or questions from our audience here?

Yes.

What do you do?

It is okay,

It's actually wonderful to do that.

So if you have a back pain or any other sickness,

You get your body as comfortable as possible.

You won't make it totally comfortable,

But especially you can do.

And then,

Focus on the pain,

The ache,

The sickness,

The disease,

Whatever it is,

And see how you can relax it.

See how you can actually move from the tension,

The tightness,

The disturbance of any illness or pain,

Until you get so soft,

After a while,

It's not there anymore.

You relax right through it.

And the wonderful thing is that once you go into a nice meditation,

When you come out afterwards,

If it's a disease,

It's gone.

Seen that many times,

Amazing stuff.

Okay,

Anecdotes.

I remember just years and years and years and years ago,

First time I went to Canberra to give a series of talks.

And my host,

They took me all over the place,

All day,

And they got lost.

And it was one of these days,

No rest,

And just from early in the morning,

It was really cold.

So by the end of the day,

I had this terrible cold,

And I was supposed to give a talk,

Public talk in a big temple,

Advertise,

All these people came.

And as soon as I started trying to give a talk,

Every other sentence I'd sneeze and cough and stuff was coming out of my nose,

Ears,

Everywhere.

It was disgusting.

So after about 15 minutes,

There's no way I could give a talk like that.

So I said,

Let's all meditate.

So we had half an hour of meditation altogether.

And afterwards I gave this beautiful talk,

Not a cough,

Not a sneeze.

Really impressive,

People were sort of like,

Wow,

Is that possible?

You had a cold,

And stuff coming out of your nose,

You weren't sort of imagining this,

It's real.

Meditate,

Because I had to.

Sometimes we're lazy,

Don't really do it unless you really want to,

Unless you have to mostly.

So you'd sit there and just after a while the cold vanished.

And I gave this lovely fluent talk without any interruptions.

Wow,

That's interesting,

This meditation actually works.

So yeah,

It does work.

Okay,

Any questions yet?

Just writing it down.

It takes a while.

So that's,

And of course,

People teach meditation in hospitals to deal with pain,

To deal with other sicknesses,

That's huge benefits.

And these are people who haven't meditated before in their lives,

Just newbies.

And if you've been meditating before,

You know what you're doing,

Oh,

It's great.

All sorts of weird stuff.

And I remember this Tibetan monk once years ago,

The people in the doctors had to tell them to stop messing around.

They got annoyed with him because when they put the ECG and EEG,

He was actually making all sorts of tricks,

Stopping and then starting again,

Really messing up their data.

So meditation is really powerful,

All sorts of great little amazing stuff,

But in particular gets you really healthy.

One deals with chronic pain and other sort of unfortunate things we have to deal with in our life.

It's very much the case that I was been,

Last year or two,

Really been focusing on this mindfulness thing,

It's what actually is it?

It's being aware of something and seeing how it changes.

There's so many things you can be aware of in your meditation or in life,

So especially in meditation,

Be aware of the really important qualities for your body,

Relaxation,

Ease of the body.

When it gets to the mind,

Again,

Peace instead of irritation,

Agitation or sometimes I call it.

And all the people who worry about thinking,

Thinking,

Thinking,

Thinking,

They're really watching the wrong thing.

Where does that thinking come from?

What's underlying it?

This is underlying agitation,

It's lack of peace inside,

Which is why we think.

When we're at peace,

When there's this beautiful stillness and peace inside,

The thoughts can't come up,

They're just not there anymore.

So don't just try and stop thinking.

You'll do that for centuries,

Just trying to stop this and stop that.

Just add more fuel to the fire because you're not putting your awareness in the right area.

You know if you're trying to fix a car or fix anything,

Sometimes you look around,

You can't see what is the problem,

What is the problem.

I want you to actually see,

Oh it's over there and it fixes up straight away.

Like the other day when I was teaching a retreat over in,

Poor Singapore is on,

They'll never live this one down.

You can bring it in here.

I was teaching a retreat over at Jhana Grove about a week,

Two weeks ago and the PA system didn't work.

And Dania was overseas,

She was the caretaker over there.

They couldn't get the PA system to work and these were really big business people and engineers from Singapore and so I just gave a talk,

Unplugged.

And then afterwards,

I went,

What's wrong with it?

I said,

Look,

It's in the cabinet,

We haven't got the key for the cabinet.

And I said,

Look down there,

It's not plugged in.

It's just a simple thing,

Turning it on instead of looking for the other stuff.

All the mindfulness,

If it's in the wrong area,

You can't see it.

Okay,

Here we go,

And a question from overseas.

Very good.

One question,

Two questions.

Number one,

How to do correct meditation when it becomes anapanasati difficult due to headache?

What do you mean when it becomes anapanasati?

Maybe sort of what you really mean here is okay,

You become aware of your breathing and you still got a headache.

So actually just make the headache just the most important thing.

You can actually breathe in to the headache,

Breathe out to the headache.

So you can actually use these little tricks.

So you got a headache and you're sort of being aware of your breath and breathe in kindness,

Compassion,

Softness and breathe out the pain,

The tension,

The tightness.

And you can visualize it.

Visualize it,

I don't know how you visualize peace or health or whatever.

These beautiful little golden bubbly balls coming in to your brain because it comes through your nose and breathing in just the headache just to relax it all.

And I don't know,

All these little monsters or demons or black stuff,

Whatever it is,

All coming out of your nose as you breathe out.

Breathing in peace,

Health,

Breathing out,

Let go.

It's a great trick but you have to actually to,

With all these things,

You have to really commit to it,

Do it properly but do it full on.

Not just breathing in peace,

Breathing out,

Let go,

It doesn't work.

You know,

Really commit to it.

Just imagine the peace,

Imagine the health.

Visualize it as much as you can.

Draw a picture about it.

It doesn't have to be accurate but it has to be something that really grabs you.

So I just imagine beautiful golden little bubbles,

Effervescent just coming in,

Just every one of them healing my headache.

And feel all the headache,

The pain or the yucky stuff just going out from my nose as I breathe out.

You do that for ten minutes full on,

Your headache will go.

The next one is how long and how often do you recommend when starting meditation?

Okay,

It's not a matter of long,

It's actually when.

So it's my little saying,

When is the best time to meditate and when is the worst time to meditate?

And the answer is the best time to meditate is now,

The worst time is later on.

Hee hee hee hee hee.

So that means that we just,

How long and how often,

As long as you're enjoying yourself,

How often,

How long is a piece of string?

How long do you spend eating?

And how often do you eat?

When you're hungry,

You eat.

If you're really hungry,

You eat long,

Big meal.

Sometimes you're not hungry at all,

Eat a little bit,

That's all you need.

Same with meditation.

If your mind,

Your spiritual being is really hungry for some peace,

For some kindness,

You've got to have a big meal.

So you know,

Really meditate long.

But if you haven't,

You know,

You're pretty okay.

And this small meal,

Small meditation is good.

Lastly,

During meditation sometimes I don't know if I'm sleeping or actually meditating.

How do I know?

It's don't even worry about knowing that,

Knowing how relaxed you are because sometimes people are dull.

Because they're dull,

It's only because they are tired.

It's called in meditation,

In psychology,

Sleep deficit disorder.

You don't sleep enough,

You don't sleep deeply enough.

So when you have an opportunity to meditate,

Your brain thinks,

Aha,

Now I can turn off and catch up on down time,

Brain down time.

Just let it,

It needs it.

And afterwards it just wakes up all by itself.

So if you don't know if you're sleeping or actually meditating,

You don't have to know,

Don't care.

But after a while you'll find that that answer is just very very clear because you're very still,

Very very aware,

Super aware.

And you know you're really super aware,

Really meditating because your mindfulness just really increases.

And I don't know why other people don't talk about this,

It's just what happens.

You get power mindfulness and super power mindfulness.

By which I mean you go outside and that jacket around the tree is exploding in sort of colour.

It's not just like you normally see it,

The colours are deeper,

Incredibly rich.

I told you,

This is a stupid story,

One of Ajahn Brahm's,

But real.

I did my 15 day retreat in my cave every year,

It's my holiday,

It's my vacation.

And of course,

Not giving any talks,

Not talking,

Not doing anything,

Just meditating all day and every day for 15 days in a row,

Not saying anything.

You get really deep meditation.

And of course after you get that,

You get really powerful mindfulness.

So the first day out,

Lunch time.

I always remember the first,

The first piece of food I put into my mouth was a spoonful of mushy peas.

And it was,

It exploded.

Honestly,

It was just wow,

That was such incredible flavour and taste.

I never ever tasted mushy peas like that.

All it was,

Was that my mindfulness was so incredibly strong.

You could have tasted anything,

You could have tasted a carrot and that carrot-ness would be so intense.

Just an ordinary carrot because your mind is just wow.

Anything you taste,

You feel like your whole body is electric,

You touch it,

Ooh.

Because your mindfulness,

Sensitivity is really raised up.

And I call that power mindfulness and superpower mindfulness.

When you look at something ordinary like that carpet,

Wow,

Look at that.

You're not going crazy,

It's just your mind is really opening up and you see so much deeper into things.

Then you know you're not sleeping.

In fact when you go into those stages,

You can't go to sleep,

Stay up all night.

Naturally,

You've got natural energy.

But if you are a bit sleepy,

Fine,

Poor things.

You guys think so much,

Worry so much.

So take a rest.

Even when you're meditating,

Lean against the wall so you don't fall over.

Okay,

There we go.

Any other questions?

That's it?

Okay,

Going,

Going,

Even talking about sleep,

People start yawning.

Okay,

So let's go.

So pay respects,

We're about three times for those of you who want to and then we can finish.