Day 032/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

But I may actually just.

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The usual announcement for those of you who are coming to the Introduction to Meditation class,

The series of four lectures,

Which introduce people to meditation.

The Introduction to Meditation class is not here in this room.

The Introduction class is being held in the room to my right.

In the room there.

That's the Introduction to Meditation class.

I have to say that because here that we assume that you know the basics of meditation.

It's just having one subject just to improve one's understanding of meditation and also that we meditate for much longer,

45 minutes,

Which is much longer than what most people can do when they start out.

So we don't want to introduce the people who start their journey of meditation by torturing them for 45 minutes.

So if you're still starting out,

Just go to the room next door.

You're only tortured for 15 minutes at a time.

So anyway,

I think most people are coming now.

So this afternoon that somebody did ask me about,

Can we talk a little bit about some of the other forms of meditation,

Some of the other traditions,

Especially someone was talking about the Hindu tradition where one has the idea of chakras and opening up the chakras to somehow make the meditation easy.

And that particular idea and teaching occurred quite a long time after the Buddha was alive.

So it's not part of the early Buddhist teachings.

And also,

Does not matter whether it was there before or there afterwards,

That still it can be something which can happen,

But usually in my understanding and practice of meditation,

It's not all that helpful.

It actually ends up to be a disturbance to your meditation rather than enhancement of your meditation.

So what it really means is that as one gets into the meditation,

You go past the beginning stages of present moment awareness and some silence,

There's not many thoughts going on in your head.

And you go to something like being able to observe the breathing,

Breathing in,

Breathing out.

The whole purpose of this meditation is to be able to focus on that breath without any effort,

Without too much force,

So that you can sustain your awareness on the breathing effortlessly.

And it's important to emphasize the effortlessness of this meditation because if there is some effort going on in there,

It means one can't relax.

It means that it's just another job you have to do.

And of course,

Where there's effort,

There's eventually tiredness.

And that is not really just what we're here for.

We're here for,

We're already tired enough,

You're already doing enough.

This is a meditation so you can have some peace and mental relaxation and some natural energy coming up,

Not forced energy,

But the energy which comes up when the mind can be still for a little while,

Not doing stuff,

And the natural energy returns to you.

So we're not really here for effort,

But we're here for just learning how to be still.

I keep on saying this,

How do I keep the water still?

You can't hold it still,

You have to put it down and after a while it becomes still by itself,

The effortless stillness.

I've done that so many times,

I just rush through it here this afternoon.

But once we have effortless awareness of the breath,

We sustain awareness,

Breathing in,

Breathing out,

Breathing in,

Breathing out,

Because it's effortless,

Because it's sustained,

You're not needing to metabolize so much,

You're not doing anything,

Your car as it is in a simile is idling,

It's not going anywhere,

It's not doing stuff.

Therefore it needs less petrol.

If it needs less petrol,

It just basically you don't need so much oxygen going into your body,

So your breathing gets less and less,

It gets more subtle,

More smooth,

More soft.

That's the nature of the meditation.

It's not something one decides to do,

It's just nature.

So you find your breathing in softer and softer and softer.

The idea is that the body vanishes,

So you can't feel the body anymore,

So the hands disappear,

The arms disappear,

The legs disappear,

And the whole rest of the body,

You don't know where it is because you're just very peacefully,

First of all just watching the breathing,

And then the breath gets so soft,

Just the beauty,

The delight which comes up in the meditation,

That's what one is focusing on.

The body is supposed to vanish,

Disappear.

Now what can sometimes happen if you don't let the body disappear quick enough,

In other words,

It's still,

You know,

You're interested in the body,

How are the legs going,

What are the hands up to,

Instead of being confident you can leave them alone and they're fine,

What happens then is that you do get energies coming up in the meditation.

These are energies because you're not wasting energy doing stuff,

You know,

Because you,

That's why the breath is soft,

Because you don't need energy,

You're not metabolizing,

But you get a natural form of energy,

An awakeness coming up,

And that can be very strong,

Huge energies,

And what happens is sometimes those energies,

They go into the body when really they should belong into the mind.

Still got a link to the body somewhere,

Which means when the beautiful energies come up,

They would normally create these beautiful lights,

We're called nimittas,

Beautiful lights coming up in the mind,

It's in the mind,

Energy pours into the mind,

But if you've still got some body awareness,

It goes into the body,

And that's where we get these energies which are actually encouraged,

You know,

In some traditions,

You know,

Called Kundalini,

Called opening up of chakras,

Yeah,

It is some interesting powerful energies,

And people love weird stuff,

That's one of the,

I used to love weird stuff,

And we'd go,

Ah,

This is really great because it's uncommon,

But it's not all that helpful,

You know,

In the,

My experience of meditating,

It's much,

Much preferable if they stay up in the mind,

Because sometimes you get these energies,

They can go into certain places,

Focus on a certain place in your body,

You can maybe direct it,

But in the end,

So what?

It's an energy which is not actually that comfortable,

It's not peaceful,

It's not subtle,

It's too strong,

It's in the wrong place,

It's not harmful to the body,

It's just uncomfortable and you miss the great opportunity to take that energy where it really belongs,

Into the mind.

So that's why in the tradition which I've been teaching,

Learned,

Followed for such a long time,

We try and just put the body aside as soon as possible,

So the chakras,

Whatever's going on in the body,

Up and down the spine,

You look after yourself,

Mate,

I'm going into the realm of the mind,

They're much more peaceful.

And also,

If anyone is concerned about health benefits,

The greatest health benefit is actually when you let the body vanish and you disappear from the body,

So you're just in the realm of the mind with these nimittas,

With these beautiful bliss and you can't feel the body,

And then your body looks after itself so well.

Basically,

With health,

A lot of times we are the problem.

We're getting involved,

Worrying,

Messing around,

Where the body heals itself so well.

One of the best ways of healing,

You go to hospital,

What do you do?

They put you in a bed.

Sleep,

Rest,

The body has its own way of dealing with things.

And I've seen that so many times.

Stories,

Anecdotes to make it interesting.

We're,

Many monks know all these stories,

Young monk in Thailand,

In the days when there was huge numbers of mosquitoes,

This was jungles,

42 years ago,

In the northeast.

And we would meditate in the evening under the trees.

How romantic,

In the jungles,

A long way away from anywhere.

No air con,

No roof,

No windows or doors,

Just under the trees.

Just like real monks would be meditating for millennia.

But it may sound romantic until the mosquitoes start coming.

Real life is not like the fantasies.

I still remember going to New Zealand for the first time,

To the South Island,

Up into the mountains.

I saw photos,

They were idyllic.

These beautiful lakes and mountains and greenery.

And I thought,

This is like heaven.

Until you started walking and you stopped to admire the view.

And you got covered in sand flies.

They were all over the place.

Okay,

You put some mosquito repellent on,

But because you were walking,

The sweat soon washed off the mosquito repellent and they were back on you again.

You know,

In those photographs,

You couldn't see any sand flies.

The reality was,

Ahhh.

So anyway,

In those jungles,

Yeah,

It may sound idyllic,

But there were so many of those mosquitoes.

And the story was,

They were so irritating.

There were many on you at one time.

And I'm not exaggerating,

Monks don't exaggerate 60 or 70 on you at one time,

Which was very irritating.

You know,

Just one on you is hard enough.

But we're supposed to be tough guys.

Very times I'd open my eyes and my teacher Ajahn Chah was there sitting perfectly still.

If he hadn't been there,

I'd have run away.

But you know,

You felt that you should stay.

And there,

This irritating mosquito,

The only thing you could do was actually to meditate properly.

So just focus on the breathing.

And just let the breathing get so soft and so peaceful,

You went deep inside,

Where you could not feel your body.

You did not know whether the mosquito was biting you or not.

Mosquitoes,

They're not dangerous,

The chance of you getting malaria,

Fever,

There's no malaria in that area,

There's no dengue in that area,

So it was safe,

Which is the irritation,

That's the only thing to worry about.

So you went inside,

You couldn't feel your body.

Oh,

What bliss that was.

I always say thank you to those mosquitoes for actually teaching me to meditate properly,

When you go inside where you can't feel your body.

And then all the energy was just right there in your mind,

Instead of just going over to your body.

The body was left alone for a while.

And when you came out of your meditation,

The body was just so healthy.

It's a weird thing.

But I know this from experience of many,

Many years,

Many decades now.

If you worry about your body,

Then you can't separate your mind from the body,

Your mind can't go to its own space.

And the body is always tense.

But if you can,

Just go beyond it for a little while.

When you come out afterwards,

Your body always feels like a million dollars.

It's weird.

Sometimes if I give a talk,

Because you can't stop your awareness of the body,

Then when I give a talk,

You know,

Afterwards,

Getting old now,

An hour,

I have to move my legs,

I feel a bit stiff here,

Stiff there.

But if you go into meditation for four hours,

Five hours,

Six hours,

You'd think,

First time I did a long meditation,

I thought,

Oh my goodness,

This is going to hurt when I come out.

Five or six hours,

Not moving.

Ahh!

But when you come out,

It's just the body feels absolutely no ache,

No pain at all,

Nowhere.

You haven't moved.

Legs,

Knees,

Back,

Feels great.

It's taught me something,

That when you actually don't worry about your body,

Just go deep inside into the realm of the mind,

In the sixth sense,

Then the body is absolutely fine.

It looks after itself much better when you're not getting involved in it,

When you can leave it alone,

Let it go.

And that's my experience.

So instead of letting this energy flow into your body,

Which people say it heals,

But my experience is it heals much better when the energy stays in the mind where it belongs,

Not in the chakras or anything else.

You get far deeper,

More bliss,

More healthy,

And more wisdom in your meditation.

So we don't let it go to the body,

If we possibly can.

What belongs in the mind should stay in the mind.

What belongs in the body stays in the body.

And the whole purpose of the meditation is to let these five senses,

Little by little,

Disappear.

They do already for many of you.

Sometimes you're sitting here,

You can hear the bird,

Stop now when I want you to listen to it.

You can hear the bird,

Sometimes you hear the traffic,

But after a few minutes it disappears.

You can't hear sound.

Close your eyes,

After a few seconds you can't see anymore.

When you first close your eyes you see the inside of your eyelids.

There we go again.

But give a few seconds,

Nothing happening there,

So the sense of sight turns off.

Hearing turns off.

Smell and taste,

That turns off,

As long as the smell doesn't change.

If you're sitting behind someone with indigestion and they pass wind,

Then you smell.

But other than that,

That's why I always say,

Anyone who has,

Passes wind regularly,

Please sit in the back.

Then there's no one behind you except the glass windows and doors.

Please do not sit in the front,

Because there's many people behind you.

Be compassionate please.

And I also say at that point,

Now you know why the people sitting in the back are sitting in the back.

No,

They're not really joking,

Anusha,

Or sitting in the back.

I was right.

Anyway,

So the senses vanish,

They disappear.

Your body,

As long as you don't get an achial pain there,

It vanishes off,

Nothing's going on.

So we don't want to open parts of the body or focus on parts of the body and irritate part of the body by being aware of them.

Even notice whatever you are aware of,

You tend to irritate.

Maybe be aware of your nose now.

My nose was fine a second ago,

Now it's itchy.

Of course,

The classic one is be aware of the saliva in your throat.

A few seconds ago,

Not a problem at all,

Now I've got a swallow.

Ever notice,

Whatever you become aware of,

You tend to irritate.

Be aware of your breathing.

Now it's not usual anymore,

It's not normal.

We always tend to interfere with stuff.

We can't help ourselves.

So the best way to relax your body,

Bring it to health,

Is to leave it alone.

Take your awareness away from the body,

Stick it in your mind.

Then the energies,

That's where they stay.

And then much healthier,

Much deeper,

More peaceful,

Much much better.

That's why,

As a teacher,

I don't encourage people to play around with chakras.

So leave them alone.

Let the body go.

Don't interfere with it.

Go into the realm of the mind.

Much more fun there.

So anyway,

That's just a little bit of introduction.

So now we are going to actually do some meditation.

So if you're not already in your meditation posture,

Just get all of your stuff around.

And when you've got your stuff ready,

Close your eyes.

And as usual,

I will begin by guiding the meditation about 10 or 15 minutes,

Then leave you alone and then close it up at 4 o'clock,

When we can have some Q&A.

So first of all,

We've got to start with some awareness of the body before we can leave it alone.

And with your eyes closed,

You have more space in your brain to become aware of your body.

This is just making sure that everything is okay in its right place,

So that aches and pains do not arise in the middle of the meditation to disturb your progress.

So you feel,

First of all,

Your legs.

Making sure your legs are well positioned.

They feel good.

Especially knees often ache with people,

So make sure your knees are in the most comfortable position you can get them.

Some people put little cushions under their knees,

Just to raise them up a little bit.

If you need that,

Fine.

So that your legs are not causing any disturbance,

At least minimum disturbance.

Then you check your bottom,

Making sure that that is comfortable on the cushion or on the chair.

It's not,

Move it,

Like I'm doing now.

And then you're back.

It's good to be meticulous at the beginning.

Don't rush things.

Be careful,

Making sure that your back is in a good posture.

I feel my back.

I'm mindful of the sensations in the back.

I'm also mindful of some tension there.

If I find any tightness there,

I relax.

How do you relax?

If you find an error,

Mindfulness gives you the feedback to know,

Yeah,

You are relaxing.

You know that because you're mindful.

You feel it.

And then I'm aware of my hands and the arms.

So they are in a really nice,

Comfortable position.

I'm aware of my head and my shoulder.

If head's too far forward,

Too far back,

My neck and shoulders start to wake.

I feel it really balanced.

As I said last night,

I often finish off by being aware of the muscles around my eyes.

I know when they're tense.

I just know how to relax.

It's letting go.

Lack of fear.

Taking peace with things.

I feel the muscles relax.

The mindfulness gives me feedback.

And that teaches me,

Feedback teaches me how to relax my muscles.

My body,

The posture is comfortable.

When I go inside my body,

There's always some place,

Somewhere which is tense,

Irritating,

Or even in pain.

I look at that part of the body.

Zoom in on it as I keep on saying.

And I feel it.

I don't run away from it.

I go into it and feel it.

Awareness of one small portion of my body,

Which needs some work.

By work,

It's just awareness.

And then learning from that awareness,

What makes that feeling worse,

What makes that feeling better.

And it's always kindness,

Letting it be,

Embracing,

Opening the door of my heart to that feeling.

That relaxes it.

And I can feel,

The mindfulness tells me,

That ache,

That pain,

That irritation gets less.

This is how I relax my own body,

Inside.

And the feedback is positive.

I feel my body inside,

Relaxing a lot.

Tension,

Which could cause things like stomachache,

Or irritable bowel syndrome,

Or goodness knows what else.

I'm aware of that feeling,

And I'm relaxing it away.

So it's not just the outside of my body is relaxed,

The inside is as well.

So I'm aware of that part of the body which still needs some attention.

And relaxing it,

And relaxing it.

Once the body is at ease,

I often pause to notice the delight of a body which is at ease.

It's a pleasure.

It's a pleasure why one doesn't want to get out of bed in the morning after a really nice night's sleep when you're cozy under the blankets.

Or why people go to places like Bali or Cable Beach if you can afford it.

Just lay on the recliners,

Totally relaxed,

Or go to a spa.

You can relax without needing to go anywhere.

Totally relaxed.

That's joyful.

And then I start to relax my mind in the same way.

I tend to what you probably all heard now so many times,

My peace-o-meter.

I ask you myself,

How peaceful am I,

Or how agitated?

By being mindful of that thing which tells me how peaceful or how agitated I am,

That is the peace-o-meter.

So I'm aware of how peaceful I am.

I can get feedback how to be more peaceful.

Or I also learn what agitates my peaceful mind.

It's always wanting something agitates me.

Contentment,

Letting be,

Kind,

Not asking anything for myself.

That relaxes and my peace-o-meter shows a deeper level of peace.

I'm just focusing on my peace-o-meter first of all.

Not rushing towards my breath or anything else.

Just calming my mind down before I go anywhere else.

I'm just focusing on my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

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Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

Not rushing towards my breath.

When you're peacefully now,

You'll find there's not that many thoughts.

You're still thinking a lot.

Go back to the peace armor to calm your mind down more.

You'll find that beating up the past,

Worrying about the future,

That just agitates the mind.

It's being here right now,

Content,

Nothing to do,

Nowhere to go.

It calms your mind down.

When it's calm,

Then start watching the breathing.

Breathing in peace,

Breathe out,

Let go.

Until you can be with the breath effortlessly.

So the breathing gets very,

Very light and smooth.

Smooth enough that it can disappear and you can leave the body,

Go into your mind.

I will now be quiet.

I will now be quiet.

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For the last couple of minutes of the meditation,

We review,

Understand,

Grow.

I will now ring the gong three times.

Please wait until the last ringing vanishes before you open your eyes to end the meditation.

Gong Okay,

I got some questions from overseas.

It's always advisable at the end of the meditation just to enjoy it before you get up and do other things.

So what have we got over here?

Very good.

Something.

Oh,

We don't have the addresses,

The places now.

How to meditate when you are tired and feeling fatigued.

I think it was last week which I mentioned about the Empress Three Questions meditation.

Now is the most important time.

Whatever you are feeling right now is the most important thing to be aware of.

And just to be kind,

The third question answered,

Most important thing to do.

So if you are tired and feeling fatigued,

You can actually sit or sit on a chair or even lay down on the bed.

But laying down on the bed you probably fall asleep.

But just to sit down and feel the fatigue.

Feel the tiredness.

Make tiredness the object of your meditation.

Don't try to get rid of it.

But care for it.

Learn from it.

Understand it.

Don't try and overcome it.

Be with it.

And after a while if you can just make the tiredness,

The fatigue,

The object of your meditation and you are making peace with it,

Being kind,

Being gentle with it,

Then you will find from fatigue you will get some really beautiful meditation states.

If you try and overcome the fatigue,

Escape from the fatigue,

Control the fatigue,

Then you just get more tired,

More tense.

So just be with the fatigue.

Let it be,

Make it the most important object of your mind and care for it.

I would like my children to meditate.

They are 16 and 20 and interested.

What is the best way for them to start?

Thank you for everything.

I'm happy because of your teachings.

Again,

If you are from overseas or interstate,

One of the nicest things is to join in these Saturday afternoon meditation classes or we are trying to do the introduction to meditation classes online.

So that should be coming soon.

So that you may be all over the world.

You can still on a Saturday afternoon you can log in.

If it's Saturday afternoon,

You're in the wrong time zones,

They're available so that you can just join in at your convenience.

One of the helpful skillful means is to download some of the guided meditations.

Because at first when you meditate,

If you don't have guidance like I do here every Saturday afternoon for the first few minutes,

Sometimes your mind will wander off and you'll be wasting time thinking and planning and stuff.

But if you have like a monk or a nun,

A teacher who is always guiding you at the beginning,

It just guides the mind in a certain direction until it's established in the direction of meditation and you just carry on by yourselves.

So for beginners and children,

If you can get some of the guided meditations,

Download it on the iPhone and then you can just play it to yourself whenever you want,

Put in your eye buds,

Ear buds sorry,

And that you can close your eyes,

Sit in your own home,

In the garden,

Wherever you happen to be and you can have like a monk as if it were right next to you.

And that's great for 16,

20 year olds,

Guided meditations.

And of course you can buy those things but the cheapest and the best come from here.

So this is all for free here so you can download them on our website and then just put them in your iPhone,

Get your favorite ones,

Ear buds and then your kids can meditate whenever they want.

And lastly,

Direction,

What is the rationale of meditating in the pre-dawn hours of the morning?

There is no rationale of meditating in the pre-dawn hours of the morning.

Any time is all right for meditation.

That's why the common question,

When is the best time to meditate?

And the answer is now.

When is the worst time to meditate?

Later.

And don't wait for the pre-dawn hours.

If you get up and it's early in the morning and you feel like you meditate,

Great,

Go for it.

If it's the afternoon,

The middle of the night,

Middle of the day,

Doesn't really matter because the meditation is a timeless pursuit.

It does not matter where the sun is in the sky.

We've got nothing to do with that at all.

What is really important is you feel peaceful,

Ready,

You feel good and then go and do some meditation.

So there is no preference to when you meditate.

Pre-dawn,

After dawn,

Middle morning,

Pre-lunch,

After lunch,

Any old time will do.

Yes,

Sometimes you have your favorite times and sometimes the favorite time changes.

Sometimes you feel like mornings are really good,

So now afternoons are better,

Evenings are better.

So it doesn't matter at all about time.

So,

Some questions from our locals.

Anyone have a question they would like to ask about meditation?

Live,

Right in front of me.

Wow,

All fully enlightened.

Yeah,

Okay,

Thank you.

Ajahn Brahm,

Thank you for your teaching.

I was wondering how I could meditate for like a fixed amount of time without an alarm.

Without alarm?

Without an alarm?

Okay,

If how you do that is you sit down,

You meditate and get yourself in a meditation posture and then you do the resolutions,

The programming mindfulness,

The aditana.

You sit down,

You relax and you say to yourself,

I will meditate for 45 minutes.

I will meditate for 45 minutes.

I will meditate for 45 minutes.

You put the instructions clearly into your mind.

In other words,

You have to be listening very carefully.

And number two,

Give clear instructions.

And then that stays in the mind.

And you will find when it gets to about 45 minutes,

You will feel,

I wonder what time it is.

And you will open your eyes and be about 45 minutes.

That's the classic training which we do.

Because sometimes you go into very deep meditations where you can't even feel your body.

You know,

You're basically not in this world for a time.

You've got to come out afterwards.

That's how we come out.

Just because people like hearing weird stories.

I tell this story on retreats about a Vietnamese Theravada monk who decided to taught a retreat over in Sydney somewhere.

And the nine day retreat schedule usually starts after people settle in and get an orientation by the retreat manager,

Half an hour meditation and opening talk maybe about 8 o'clock.

So they all came into the hall 7.

30 on a Friday evening.

And there was the monk meditating so they all meditated.

At 8 o'clock they were waiting for the talk but the monk didn't open his eyes.

He carried on meditating.

At 8.

30,

9 o'clock,

The monk was still meditating.

And you know what everybody did?

They didn't wait for him to come out of meditation.

They all went to bed.

Lazy.

But anyway,

They got up in the morning,

Usually have some morning chanting.

He was still meditating there,

Hadn't moved.

No chanting.

They waited till breakfast.

He was still meditating there.

They all went to breakfast.

After breakfast they came back to listen to the morning talk.

He was still meditating.

They waited till lunch.

They went off to lunch.

The monk was still meditating.

That monk never moved for eight days.

Stayed there.

Not moving.

Didn't drink any water.

Didn't go to toilet.

Didn't eat anything.

Didn't say a word.

How cool is that?

And after the eight days,

He came out of his meditation.

And apparently first thing he said,

I'm terribly sorry,

I should have made that determination only to stay for a certain time and then come out again because that's what we're taught to do.

If you've got a duty to do,

Then you say,

I must come out by 8pm.

And if you do that,

You always come out,

Roughly about the right time.

Otherwise,

Eight days,

Just sitting there.

Imagine if that happened to you.

How many appointments would you miss?

You get sacked for work.

Doesn't really matter if you do eight days meditation,

You don't want to go to work again.

You're much better than that.

And anyway,

All the people there said,

Oh,

You don't have to say sorry,

You don't have to apologize.

That was so inspiring to see that these things that can happen even in our modern world,

Just sit there without moving.

Eight days.

Wow.

You've got to be very careful because if you do that just at home and you don't move,

You know what happens to you?

They take you to the funeral director.

And by eight days,

By the time you come out of your meditation,

You're already in your box six feet under.

So please don't do that at home.

That's a true story.

Oh,

You get it.

Okay,

Come on.

I wanted to talk about sense of smell and,

You know,

For my brain headaches,

Certain things that I'm having a strong reaction and I cannot sit there looking at your strong perfume.

Anyway,

Having heard of this story,

I forget my back pain.

Yeah,

It is.

There may be a biological cause,

But a lot of times it's like,

It's a triggering,

There's really any toxins in the perfume.

Probably it happened once and the brain has got sort of that connection there.

One thing to try is actually making a resolution.

It's basically rewiring your brain by saying that when I smell that perfume,

I will not get a migraine.

When I smell that perfume,

I will not get a migraine.

Three times you have to really be careful,

Because the instructions are so easy to understand.

And then sometimes it happens,

Because you're rewiring in your brain so that the cause,

The stimulus and the response actually change around a bit.

It's worth a try.

First of all,

Just not the strong perfumes,

But just a little bit of a whiff of that perfume that normally calls you a migraine.

You can stop that first of all and then take it further.

It is a mindfulness technique.

You have to be really aware and make a resolution and that actually rewires the neural connections.

It's worth a try.

It doesn't cost anything.

Excellent.

So anyone got any more comments,

Questions?

Yes.

Thank you.

Yeah,

And I don't get any pay for this.

It's just all for free.

But it's much better being for free.

Thank you for that.

Okay,

For those of you who are interested,

Tomorrow we have our WESAT Day celebrations.

That's why we've got some flags out already.

That's celebrating the birth,

Enlightenment,

And the final passing away of the Buddha.

So you can see notices about the program tomorrow,

Anyone who wishes to come,

You're most welcome.

That's throughout the day.

You can come in the morning,

Time for the feast.

That's probably the easiest one to come to.

You don't have to do anything.

Just eat.

The afternoon for a Dhamma talk and for a precept ceremony or the evening for the circumambulation.

That's walking around.

So there are programs out there.

Everyone is most welcome.

You don't have to be a Buddhist to be there.

Anyone is welcome.

That's how desperate we are.

Okay,

We're not really desperate.

Okay,

Let's pay respects to Buddha Dhammasanga now.

Thank you.

.