And that's when they say,
Wow,
These monks are so amazing,
They can read your mind.
I've never told them that before.
And of course it's not reading anyone's mind.
All it is doing is knowing that many people do have injuries and when you have hot spots in your body,
That is a sign the body is focusing its energy and doing some healing there.
It's wonderful,
Amazing to see that.
The classic case,
This lady came on a retreat,
She said her head and shoulders are just so hot and warm.
I said,
Yeah,
It's probably whiplash.
Yes,
Exactly.
And your body felt so much better afterwards.
Yes,
Exactly.
So this is what happens,
She had a whiplash injury in a car,
Very common.
And when she was meditating,
She was getting still enough,
She was not controlling anymore,
She was letting go.
And because she let go and wasn't controlling anymore,
That allowed the body to send its energies to the part which was needed and she got a hot spot in her shoulders and neck.
And that healing,
She could feel the effect afterwards,
It felt so much more relaxed,
So much more peaceful afterwards.
And people have had all sorts of hot spots in their body.
In all those years I've been teaching meditation,
Maybe in your breasts,
If a woman,
A breast cancer has been avoided or healed or whatever,
Other parts of your body,
If you have like a hot spot just in one part of the body,
That's an excellent sign,
Just let it happen,
Energy of the body is going to where it's needed and you're healing yourself.
The reason why that doesn't happen normally is because with such controlled freaks we're always telling our body what to do and never letting our body do the healing which it needs.
So if ever you get in a hot spot like that during the meditation,
That's usually an excellent thing which happens.
It usually just dissipates by itself after a while and that part of the body feels really,
Really relaxed.
I've seen this so often with my own body and other people's body when they come and tell me their experiences in meditation.
But I trust the body's own ability to heal its wounds and heal sicknesses if only you can give it a chance.
It's as if over the years of evolution our body has developed its ways and means of healing itself and the problem is we never really give it the chance to heal itself.
But with meditation it's an excellent opportunity where you can just let go and let your body do what your body needs to do.
And of course one of the other things which happens in meditation,
Sometimes you see your body twist around or your body start to move during meditation and the first time this happens,
If it happens to you,
You get very stunned because you know,
You never ordered that,
You never told your body to lean to the left or to the right or twist around,
You never said that.
But it happens by itself.
And that's the most important thing.
If it happens by itself,
It's your body arranging its posture in such a manner so again some healing can happen.
So channels of energy which are blocked can actually open up.
And one of the classic cases was a woman on one of my treats a long time ago whose body was so twisted around,
So contorted that one of the people who saw that asked me to intervene because if she continues sitting like that,
She's going to really break a bone or something.
It was excessively twisted around.
And when I asked her,
She said she had no mindfulness of that at all,
She didn't know her body was twisted around.
And I said,
How do you feel?
As soon as she said she had no knowledge of it,
I understood what was going on.
And of course she had had this very,
Very bad car crash,
She was lucky to come out alive,
Had many months in hospital being rehabilitated and her body had been so badly wounded that in meditation when she relaxed,
When she literally got out of the way,
That's when her body twisted around as it needed to do to get some healing energy,
To unblock channels so the body could heal itself and she felt fabulous after that experience.
When I told her how she was sitting,
She just could not believe it because it was really,
Really contorted.
But that's what the body needed.
So I have this amazing trust after all these experiences that if you get hot or your body twists around or whatever happens,
Let it happen.
The body is much wiser than you are,
It knows what to do.
So get out of the way.
In fact that is just a basic trick of meditation.
You get out of the way and let the meditation happen.
Let it develop.
Like growing a tree,
If you try and make the tree grow faster you usually end up killing it or distorting it.
Trees and flowers need to have their own time.
Some grow fast,
Some grow slow.
But if you try and accelerate it,
You usually end up sort of stopping it happening.
At least delaying it.
So the best thing in meditation is to trust this body and even trust this mind,
It knows what to do.
You just get out of the way and let it happen.
And that gives you the great confidence that if you can let go of the body and you get some hot spots and you get some healing,
You feel great afterwards,
It's giving you encouragement,
You can do the same on your mind.
Just let it be and the mind would eventually get still all by itself.
The job in meditation is not to do things.
You don't do meditation.
Meditation happens when you stop doing stuff.
And little by little,
It takes time,
You have to be patient,
You can't expect things to happen only one day.
You just allow the mind to get slower and slower,
More and more still.
Because every time you just leave the mind alone,
You're making peace.
You use a simile,
A house of peace,
Like an ordinary house,
Is made of many,
Many bricks and every brick in your house is laid one at a time.
And after many days,
Many weeks,
You have a house.
So the deep meditations,
They're built from many individual moments of peace.
Make peace right now.
You make peace a moment,
One more brick in your house of peace.
Make peace with this moment.
It doesn't matter what you're making peace with.
So even if you've got a tired mind in your sleep,
You make peace with your sleepy mind.
If your mind is restless,
Make peace with the restlessness.
By making peace,
I don't mean you get indulging and get right into all the thinking and the fantasies and the dreams and stuff.
I mean just calm down,
Be peaceful.
Don't try and get rid of it,
That's making war.
Don't indulge in it and get interested in that because that is like attachment.
Just make peace with it.
And if you make peace with every moment,
You find your body becomes relaxed,
You do get those hot spots if you need them,
If you're sick.
And also you get very,
Very peaceful and eventually your mind is just so calm and peaceful which is the purpose of meditation.
So making peace in every moment,
A house of peace is made by many,
Many,
Many,
Many moments of peace until you build and build and build them up.
When you have enough credit of peace,
Then you get very,
Very still.
Okay,
So let's give it a try.
So for those of you who have just come in and you've come for the Introduction to Meditation class,
That class has got a special guest teacher today,
One of the monks,
Because it's the fifth Saturday,
But those of you on the ongoing class are welcome here.
And now we can get into our meditation posture,
If you'd like to get yourself nice and comfortable.
Close your eyes.
When your eyes close,
You don't have to worry what other people are doing,
You can't see them.
You're just making your brain and that little bit more simple.
Sometimes the mind is like it's got five telephones on it,
Five different lines.
Every now and again the sound telephone calls,
Somebody's closed the door.
Sometimes the body channel,
The body telephone calls you up,
You need to scratch something.
Sometimes the taste or smell.
But at least now we've disconnected the sight telephone.
We don't receive any messages from our sense of sight,
It just makes our office inside our head a little bit more quiet.
And we receive all the calls,
As many as we can,
From the body telephone.
The body tells you what it needs.
Listen very carefully and you are concerned enough about the well-being of your body to act on whatever your body asks.
If your legs need to be moved,
You act on that and move them.
All the while being mindful to see if that makes the posture any better.
If it does,
Great,
Stay in that better posture,
That's kindness.
If it doesn't make any difference,
Well you can just go back to the original posture if you want.
You move to explore,
Explore the best position for your body.
You might find one which is much more comfortable than the one you're in now.
And then with your butt on the chair or the cushion,
Don't assume this is the best posture.
Move it around a bit.
Always I move around my back,
Stretching it,
Relaxing it,
Moving it left and right,
Loosening my shoulders.
If you get your back right,
Begin the meditation,
You have a very easy time sitting for long periods.
But if you are heedless,
If you don't put enough concern into your posture,
If you just sit there and think,
Well this posture worked last time,
It's going to work again,
You're going to be in trouble.
So be mindful of the feelings in your back.
Be kind,
What we call kindfulness,
To move and adjust,
To relax until your back feels really good.
And even things we pay little attention to,
Like our arms and our hands.
You know the reason why people fidget their hands so much is because their hands are uncomfortable.
So find a nice position for your hands,
The comfort which you can maintain for 40-45 minutes.
And lastly your head.
It's always good to check the muscles around your eyes and mouth to make sure they're relaxed.
It just gives you an indication of the quality of your mind.
If you're worried,
If you're tense,
If you're tired,
You can feel that in the muscles around your eyes and mouth.
But if you're at peace,
You've not got many things bothering you.
The muscles in your forehead,
Around the eyes,
Around your mouth,
Relax.
Just being mindful of those muscles and being able to relax them at will helps you,
Helps you keep a happy peaceful mind.
It's an indicator.
And of course if ever you need to cough,
Please cough or sneeze.
If you need to scratch something,
Don't just endure,
Just scratch.
Just get over with quickly and then go back.
After years and years and years of trying to resist itches and coughs,
Find out it's much better just to cough or to scratch.
You don't get so disturbed.
As Brian understood,
ThisKid he had never said anything,
But,
You know,
Off case it goes.
He drowned on Christmas.
He died listening to the computer,
But he wasn't library too.
Once the body is as relaxed as you can make it by movement,
Then try the further development of these two important qualities,
Mindfulness and kindness,
By zooming in on one part of your body,
A part which is tense,
Irritating or painful.
Because once you can be mindful of a small area of your body,
You have the opportunity of feedback.
You can notice irritation or the pain,
The tension get tighter or looser.
It can ease off or get worse.
You can see if you can find the link between the change in that irritating part of your body and your mental attitude.
It's like a science experiment of how your mind and your body interact.
And you soon learn that when you have a mind which lets things be,
Which makes peace,
Which is kind,
The irritation,
The pain gets less.
You can't expect it just to vanish at first though,
But it gets less and you continue this on.
The awareness giving you feedback,
You learn by developing this mental attitude of letting things be.
Letting go of pulling and pushing like two people,
Letting go of both ends of a string,
The string becomes loose.
When you take all the pressure off things,
You're not trying to get somewhere,
Retain something or get rid of stuff,
That's pressure.
You let it be.
You're kind,
Opening the door of your heart to this feeling.
If you do it properly,
You'll probably notice the irritation or pain gets less.
You are healing your own body.
And you continue on with this mindfulness and kindness just on a small part of your body until you relax that part of the body as much as you can.
At the very least,
It is more comfortable,
Less irritating,
It's worth it.
And you're developing a skill which over the weeks and months of years,
You can use to relax even extreme pains away.
Like the lady who wrote to me from Eastern Europe saying she used this to overcome her arthritis.
She hasn't got any arthritis anymore.
Just be mindful,
Aware,
Kind and observe that part of the body becoming relaxed,
At ease,
The pain lessening.
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Once the body is relaxed,
And really at ease,
Then you can enjoy a feeling of relaxation.
I always spend a minute or two just enjoying the pleasure of a body at ease.
Not totally at ease,
But at ease it feels really nice.
Noticing the pleasure,
The pithi sukha of a relaxed body takes the relaxation deeper.
And you're also developing some important training,
First on your body,
Which you will soon apply to your mind.
And then I do apply it to my mental world,
Just to see how my mind is peaceful or agitated,
How it feels.
I'm mindful,
Aware of how much peace or lack of peace it has.
Once I focus on that,
I can get feedback,
What makes my mind more peaceful,
What makes me more agitated.
Just like with my body,
If I let this moment be,
If I'm kind to this moment no matter what it is,
If I make peace with this moment,
Then I can feel my mind becoming more peaceful.
I get feedback,
And now I'm going in the right direction,
Seeing how peaceful my mind is,
Feeling that as fully as I can,
And learning how to draw it into deeper peace.
I cannot put pressure on my mind,
I cannot force it,
Otherwise it goes in the opposite direction,
It becomes more tense,
More agitated.
And I know what I mean by making peace with every moment,
That's how the peace grows.
I'm not concerned if I have thoughts in the mind,
Or if I'm tired,
That's just the object which is really important for me.
I want to make peace with this.
And I notice over the minutes,
The thoughts lose their intensity.
I'm making peace with them,
They get softer,
Less frequent,
Less of a problem,
Because I'm making peace with my mind,
In every moment.
And I can feel the result,
Mindfulness gives you feedback.
If I get excited or afraid,
Start doing things,
My mindfulness gives me the feedback,
I'm going in the wrong direction.
So I stop,
And make peace.
If there is an interruption,
A noise,
I just make peace with it,
I don't make war and fight it.
Everything I experience,
Opportunity to make peace.
Because I'm building up my house of peace.
And soon I become aware of my breathing.
And naturally,
I make peace with every in-breath,
Every out-breath I let go,
Making peace,
Letting go.
Now I'm going to be quiet,
And I'm speaking again until the end of the meditation.
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Sometimes you may have forgotten Sometimes you may have forgotten to make peace,
Lost the mindfulness.
But with training,
Every moment can be a moment you make peace.
Your meditation takes off,
Really peaceful.
Now,
Ring the gong three times.
Please wait for the third sound from the gong before you open your eyes and come out from the meditation.
GONG Okay,
So before we get the questions from overseas,
Is there any questions from Perth?
Okay,
Let's get these ones then.
Yes,
Can you come and pay?
So we have here.
Great.
Okay,
From USA,
Germany and Vietnam.
These Saturday afternoons,
Live streamed all over the world,
You get really interesting questions from again all over the world.
So first of all from USA,
How should one approach chronic pain aggravated by emotional trauma in meditation?
So if you have some chronic pain,
First of all,
To make sure your body is as comfortable as possible,
Which means don't look at how other people are meditating,
How their body is positioned.
When you find your best position,
Get a lovely chair which is as relaxing as you possibly can or even meditate on the bed,
On the floor if you need to,
To look after your body.
But if you have chronic pain aggravated by emotional trauma,
You will never be able to totally eliminate your pain just by your posture.
It's a start and then the best way is to,
It's a hard thing to say but it can be done and it's one of the most effective ways,
Is to learn,
Just to treat the pain,
The emotional trauma in the way of the monster who came into the Emperor's palace.
It's one of those stories which is one of the most effective in such situations.
I'll go over it very quickly because many of you have heard this countless times.
A monster came into a palace while the Emperor was away and because it was so frightening,
All the guards,
Security,
They just froze in terror,
Allowed the monster to go right into the central hall and sit on the Emperor's throne.
As soon as it sat down on the throne,
Everyone else tried to get that monster to leave,
Shouting,
Cursing,
Threatening,
But every unkind word or unkind deed just made the monster a bit bigger and more of a problem.
This had been going on for a while and the monster had grown huge.
When the Emperor came back,
The Emperor knew what to do straight away.
Instead of saying,
Get out of here,
You don't belong,
The Emperor said,
Welcome,
Thank you for coming.
And a few words of sincere,
Has to be sincere,
Kindness.
The monster grew an inch smaller,
Less of a problem.
That let everybody see their mistake.
Instead of trying to get rid of the monster,
They were kind to it.
And there were many,
Many acts of kindness until the monster got so small it vanished completely away.
That is based on the story told by the Buddha in the Samyutta Nikaya.
It's not exactly as the Buddha said it,
But it's a very powerful story.
The monster from the United States here is the chronic pain aggravated by emotional trauma.
That's a monster,
It's got into your body,
It shouldn't really be there,
But it's there.
So what do you do?
Every time you say,
Get out of here,
You don't belong,
You'll find that pain gets an inch bigger,
The trauma gets more of a problem.
When you say,
Welcome,
Thank you for being here,
It's a tough thing to say,
But you can do that.
And then the monster gets a little bit smaller,
A little bit less of a problem,
Until one day it vanishes.
See,
Similarly of the monster who came into the palace,
The anger eating monster.
Give that a try,
It's very powerful,
Had a lot of success with it.
Next question from Germany,
As you make peace and let go,
Is it correct to say that you feel your way through meditation as you are mindful,
Is meditation just a mindful feeling?
I would say it's like a mindful journey,
It's an exploration.
It's because you feel your way by seeing how you can make your mind more peaceful.
Even when you get to the stage of watching your breathing,
You're aware of your breath and you can just get the feedback from your breath.
Is your breath getting softer and more peaceful,
Is it getting more agitated?
Each one of these things you are mindful of is something which is not constant,
It will move and change.
Your job is to see how your attitude of mind influences whatever your meditation is,
Object is at that time,
How it influences it to get more peaceful,
More clear,
More happy.
And you soon learn,
It's a journey,
It's a trial and error.
Yes,
You can get teachers telling you of their experiences and they can tell you how to do it.
Like I keep saying,
Just let go,
Be kind,
Open the door of your heart,
But that doesn't mean anything until you actually practice that,
You do let go,
You are kind,
You do open the door of your heart,
And when you actually do it,
It's so much more different than actually listening to it.
It actually works,
It is what causes your mind to be more peaceful,
More alert,
More happy,
More still.
So it is like feeling your way in the sense of,
Just the simile I gave some time ago,
Of being lost in the mist up in the mountains,
You can't see which way to go.
But in the mist,
You know that if you find a little creek or even a small streamlet,
You know water always goes downhill.
So if you can follow that stream,
You always know you are going down,
Down,
Down,
Down,
Until eventually you get below the mist on top of the mountain.
That's how I escaped once when I got lost in the mountains in Scotland and the mist came so suddenly.
So this is the way you feel yourself,
You see,
As long as you are getting more peaceful,
You are getting more still,
You know you are going in the right direction.
You can't really see just what lies too far ahead,
But at least you are getting more peaceful,
More still,
You are getting in the correct direction,
Carry on.
And then when you get below the mist,
You can see exactly what's going on,
You have done a lot of really good stuff,
Your mindfulness is very clear,
Very happy,
Very beautiful,
You've come through the mist and now you can really see your way.
So meditation is just a mindful feeling,
It's mindfully feeling,
Knowing this in-call peace and learning how it grows,
Learning peace of mind.
Good mercy from Vietnam,
I find myself most relaxed and comfortable when lying down.
Is meditation while lying down acceptable?
Yes,
It's one of the four postures taught by the Buddha.
The only part of trouble is that if you lie down,
Especially on a bed,
You usually fall asleep because psychologically that's where you go to sleep.
So I usually ask people if they do lying down meditation,
Only if you are really,
Really exhausted or physically injured and it's so difficult to actually sit meditation,
Then lying down is fine.
But you know we have chairs these days and people find it very comfortable to sit on a chair.
So you should be able to get a nice comfortable chair from Vietnam to sit down,
To meditate and for me because I was brought up as a young monk sitting on the floor,
I remember even when I was growing up I used to do all my homework sitting on the floor simply because you could spread your books on the floor,
Much easier than spreading them on a table,
The floor was much wider.
So I used to love sitting on the floor,
That's why my body is more comfortable sitting on like this than it is sitting on a chair.
But that's just me.
So wherever you can be most relaxed,
Yes okay,
Lying down is fine but make sure you don't fall asleep.
So one thing to do if you are doing lying down,
Make sure you lie down in a posture where you never fall asleep.
So I trained myself over the years always to go to sleep lying on my right side because that's actually what the Buddha did.
That's a cool thing to do,
I'm a monk.
So I lie down on my either left side or right side.
You should start on the right side and if I do turn over in the sleep I go to my left side.
But I never go to sleep on my back.
Haven't done that for years.
So if I do lying down meditation I always reserve lying on my back for lying down meditation.
If I'm on my side it's like my brain psychologically knows he wants me to go to sleep if I'm on my back that's a posture I reserve for meditation.
So that's a nice way of doing it and that means your brain knows exactly what to do so you don't have to worry about falling asleep.
Okay so I hope I answered some of those questions to your satisfaction overseas.
Unfortunately you've only got one chance,
You asked a question and then you haven't got feedback time so I'm sorry about that but hopefully that it was useful.
Any questions from here about making peace especially?
That was the focus of the meditation today.
And especially whenever you have an ache or pain in the body you can always make peace with it,
You don't have to make war.
Yes?
What was the logic of going to sleep on his right side?
Oh no one actually knows the logic of going to sleep on his right side.
Somebody once suggested it's because the position of the heart.
This is on the left side so that means the heart won't have to push uphill so much.
Now I mean that didn't make too much sense to me but at least there was some sort of answer.
Yeah exactly,
So you know it's less work so you can go to sleep more easily.
I don't know but that's just what they said.
Sometimes at the beginning of the meditation when we're still relaxing the mind the awareness of the breathing comes in so quickly,
Sometimes it just comes in.
Now at times we switch to breathing awareness but the mind is still not completely relaxed.
What do we do?
It's usually,
Again when I do the guided meditation at the very beginning it's very general.
I don't expect everybody to follow this.
Some people have been meditating for years,
They know exactly how to calm their mind down and they can go on to the breath very quickly.
So this is not sort of like a boot camp where you have to follow the instructions totally,
100%.
But the usual thing which I encourage people to do,
If your breath comes up then if it's come up,
That's what you watch.
A couple of Saturdays ago I did quite a powerful meditation technique based on the empahshri questions,
If you can remember that.
Whatever is in front of your mind,
Whatever that happens to be,
That is the most important thing in the whole world.
So if the breath comes up,
Give it importance,
Don't chase it away,
Say I should be focusing on something else.
So it's like you let your mind decide,
You don't do anything.
You just sit there and if the breath comes up,
Fine,
That's what I'm going to watch.
And if the next second sort of bodily feeling comes up,
That's what I'm going to watch.
And everything which comes up,
You know,
You actually give it importance.
It's like meditation,
It's not like watching a TV with the remote control where you switch to the breath channel and add on like that,
Then you switch to the body channel or something else.
You know,
You've got no remote,
It just does it by itself.
So don't sort of keep switching objects,
What you think you should be doing.
Let the mind do it.
And usually what happens,
If the breath comes up too early,
Yeah,
I'll watch my breath,
But if it's too early then it vanishes away by itself.
And I realize this,
There's no such thing as the correct meditation object,
The one which you should be watching.
Focus on this,
It's better than focusing on something else.
Whatever is in front of your mind right now,
That is the most important in our world.
So that serves to take away this controller and it makes your mindfulness much stronger.
If you'll stay with the thought or you're with the breath and you think you should be somewhere else,
You're not giving this object importance and that's why the meditation starts to fade away,
It doesn't develop.
But if you're on,
Say,
The breath and,
Okay,
I'm not quite sure why it's here now,
But here it is,
The most important thing in the world,
Which means you really focus on it,
You don't try and get rid of it.
It's just the only thing is sometimes,
You know,
I feel that it's just catching on the breath,
You know.
I don't feel that relaxed because this mind is still unstable,
You get some sort of flashing light just giving,
Giving.
.
.
Yeah,
Even a flashing light,
If it wants a flash,
Fine by me.
Because I'm just making peace with every moment.
Whatever happens,
It's not my business.
So you just make peace,
Give this moment importance and then eventually everything settles down,
Quite naturally.
But you don't call the shots,
You don't get the remote control on your brain and try and switch channels.
Okay,
Anything else?
Yeah.
A similar question on watching things.
I have to do hydrotherapy a couple of times a week,
Which involves walking through a meter deep water for 30 minutes back and forth.
Okay.
It was the most boring thing in the world until the penny dropped and I thought,
Aha,
Walking meditation.
Yeah.
It's a 30 meter lane and I'm sure in one of your books you said it's best to watch your legs or your feet.
I find I can't do it,
I still have to watch the breath.
Should I fight it or just say,
Well that's it,
I'll watch the breath?
If that's what happens,
Then just do that.
Actually if you're walking through deep water,
It's probably good to watch your breath to make sure it's coming in and going out.
It's also good to go just before the pool closes,
Otherwise you keep crashing into people.
Exactly,
Yes.
Thank you.
Very good.
Okie dokie.
Okay,
So if you have any more questions,
You can come up afterwards.
So now let's bow three times.
For those of you who know what we're bowing to,
I always,
When my first bow,
I bow to virtue and then to peace and compassion.
Because I worship virtue,
Trustworthiness,
Not lying,
Being reliable.
That's why I bow to virtue.
The second time to peace,
So important.
And last night,
Kindness,
Compassion.
