Day 074/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

So welcome everybody to this afternoon's meditation session.

Whenever it gets hot,

I always remember Ajahn Chah.

We used to,

In the hot season in Thailand,

We used to have this old hall where we used to do all the ceremonies and because it was a very poor monastery,

It just was four brick walls,

Maybe about a quarter of the size of this room with a tin roof with no insulation.

In the hot season,

After eating our one meal of the day,

We had to go in that room with all our robes and spare robes on and meditate for two hours and it was so hot.

I think when you go to such extremes to meditate in such heat,

Whenever it gets hot these days,

I always realize this is cool compared to those days.

What it did actually,

It taught us how that when you are meditating,

Just forget about the body,

The body will look after itself and if you do feel hot or you do feel cold,

You can do whatever you like to try and make yourself comfortable but there's always a limit to what you can do.

Once you've done the best you possibly can with your body,

You just leave it alone and then you just make peace with things because sometimes whether it's heat or cold,

Whether it's noise,

Sometimes we realize we can't change things.

There's another that teaches great pieces of advice and he gave it in one particular circumstance,

But I've expanded that to just about every circumstance in my life.

He used to say whenever we would complain about the noise,

It's never the noise disturbs you,

It's you who disturb the noise.

I realized that was so true because the noise,

Dogs,

That's what they do,

They bark,

Lawn mowers make their lawn mower noise,

Crows make crow noises and just people make people noises and the body makes its heat and cold,

Pain and discomfort,

That's just what the body does,

It's just nature.

And by saying that it's not the body disturbs us,

We disturb the body,

It's when we try to make the body more comfortable when it's totally impossible and that striving,

That wriggling,

That worry,

That is what disturbs.

And so when you manage to get the body in the best possible position,

Even when we have air conditioners,

Because I remember over in Jhana Grove,

The meditation retreat center,

We've got a beautiful air conditioner and when it was cold I said,

Do you want to use it?

They said no.

When it was hot,

Do you want to use it?

They say no.

So sometimes people like it cold,

Some people like it warmer,

So you can't please everybody,

In fact it's so hard to please your own body.

So in the end we just say,

Okay,

This is good enough and we let the body be.

The sound,

This is good enough,

We let sound be.

Our mind,

This is good enough,

We let our mind be.

In fact that idea of not disturbing life and just being at peace with the flow of life leads to the heart of meditation.

Meditation is not controlling the world outside.

Meditation is all about getting a positive reaction to the world outside.

So when there's noise,

We just accept it and make peace with it.

In other words,

There's the sound of the car,

We don't create more sound with our thinking,

Oh we shouldn't have cars here,

We should have double or triple glazing,

Soundproof the whole room.

And then we go thinking so much,

The noise of the car has finished about five minutes ago and we're still thinking about the noise inside,

The echoes of life.

So when we learn how to let go of these things,

There's the noise of the car and it's gone in a second.

The body feels a bit hot but that's just fine,

It's not life threatening.

There's discomfort in the body,

Yeah,

But there's always some discomfort.

So we let it be by realising this is good enough and then we don't disturb things,

We make peace with things.

And you find a strange thing happens,

When you don't fight the world but you make peace with it,

Then the mind gets to be peaceful,

Then the mind finds stillness,

Then the mind experiences this beautiful joy.

But if you try and fight the world,

Oh you just get what George Bush called collateral damage.

The more you fight and struggle and complain,

Just the more the mind gets tense and tired and loses its happiness.

The more one says this is good enough and learns to make peace,

Be kind,

Be gentle,

Then the more the mind actually feels free.

So you don't need to have the perfect meditation hall,

You don't need to have the most silent place in the world,

You don't need to have a body which is fit and healthy and doesn't disturb you when you sit,

All you need to do is have the right attitude.

Not the best place,

Not the best body,

But the best attitude.

And that best attitude towards meditation is the ability not to complain,

To make peace,

To be kind,

Be gentle.

But I really like the making peace,

I made a lot of that saying during the last meditation retreat which I did run at Jhana Grove in Serpentine last month,

Just make peace with things.

So if your body is hot,

Just make peace with it,

If it sounds outside,

Make peace with it.

And you can find you can make peace with anything.

Making peace means you don't fight,

You don't complain,

You don't argue,

You don't try and escape,

You just value this moment.

Last week I did point out the one,

The great tricks of meditation which keeps you in the mind,

Which keeps you in silence,

Which keeps you with the breath,

Is valuing these things.

And to be able to value them,

Another way of looking at it is just you make peace with this moment.

Because when you make peace with it,

You're valuing it,

You're respecting it,

You're allowing it to be.

When you make war with things,

You try to change things,

Which means you don't value it,

You don't care for it,

You just want it to be different.

Okay,

In life we have to sort of make things different,

We have to do our job,

We have to be managers and changers and fixer uppers.

In meditation we're going in a totally different direction.

Instead of seeing the faults in things,

We see the beauty in things.

Instead of just trying to fix things up,

We let them be.

Instead of just trying to fight to solve the problems in life,

We make peace with the problems in life.

When you make peace with the problems in your meditation,

You let them be.

Surprise,

Surprise,

They disappear.

Because what is meditation all about anyway?

Having a peaceful mind.

And how can you have a peaceful mind when you fight and make wars?

If you make peace,

Allowing things to be,

By saying such things as this is good enough,

This is good enough,

This is good enough,

Then you have no fight to make.

This is good enough,

This is good enough,

This is good enough.

Gives you an appreciation for this moment.

This is good enough,

This is good enough,

This is good enough.

Means you can relax and rest.

With that type of attitude,

You'll find the meditation just becomes peaceful,

Becomes gentle,

Becomes free,

Because you're putting in the right attitude.

In a meditation retreat,

I call this making good meditation karma.

Putting in the causes so that the goals of meditation,

Like peace and stillness,

Must happen.

So remember your job is to create the causes of peace.

What's the cause of peace?

By making peace in every moment,

By being kind and gentle in every moment.

They become the causes of a still,

Peaceful,

Free mind.

And it also means that that's something you can always do.

Sometimes people would say to me,

I've been in meditation for a while,

Sometimes I just can't meditate,

Sometimes I sit down,

I just can't watch my breath.

And you answer them so you don't understand what meditation is.

You can always make peace,

Even if your mind is tired,

Make peace with it,

Be kind,

Be gentle with it.

Even if your mind is restless because you've been thinking and doing so much,

It just takes you a long time to slow down.

It doesn't matter,

You can still make peace just with your mind and with its restlessness,

Make peace with it.

You know that's the best you can possibly do because you're creating the causes for future peace.

Every time you make war,

You just create more restlessness in the mind.

Every time you make peace with this moment,

You're creating the cause of deeper and deeper stillness.

So that's actually how we meditate.

It doesn't matter where we start from,

Whether we're hot,

Whether we're cold,

Whether we're tired,

Whether we're energetic,

Whether we're sick or whether we're healthy,

Whether we're old,

Whether we're young,

It doesn't matter what you're starting with.

You can always make good meditation,

Karma now by making peace,

Being kind and being gentle.

So those instructions today,

Please don't sort of complain and just get your body as comfortable as you possibly can but realize you will never get it perfect,

So it's good enough.

So for those of you who come in for the Introduction to Meditation class,

That's in the room to my right over there and that's for the people who haven't meditated much before.

In this class,

We're going to now meditate for about 45 minutes,

So for those of you who haven't come in this class before,

You just come to learn meditation,

That's in the room to my right.

So this is an ongoing class for those who can meditate a bit longer.

So if you'd like to get yourselves comfortable,

In a few moments we'll start the 45 minute meditation.

So sitting down,

And as usual just bring your attention to your body with your eyes closed.

Give a minute or two for your attention to centre in the moment with the feelings in the body.

Know how your body is feeling right now.

Make peace with those feelings,

Be kind to them.

If you can change your position to make them a tiny bit more comfortable,

Please do so.

With the understanding you never make the body perfect.

Thank you.

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Relaxing your body,

Being in mindfulness together with compassion on your own physical body.

Until the body is as relaxed as you can get it,

Until you can say good enough,

Then you let the body be,

Turn your attention to this moment,

No past,

No future.

Whatever you're experiencing now,

Don't just value it,

But don't try and improve it either.

This is good enough if you make peace with every moment.

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How much peace have you made?

And what does that peace feel like?

At the end of every meditation,

I'd like just to know how I feel and reflect on how I got here.

This is where I learn insight.

Insight into the path and the destination.

As you know from experience,

Not through thought,

You know from experience what peace of mind is like.

What freedom is,

What happiness is.

You know how to achieve that.

You know the path,

How to meditate.

I will now ring the gong three times.

Listen to every chime from the gong when the last ringing fades away.

That's your signal to come out from your meditation.

There you go.

That's really one of the most pleasant things to be able to do,

Just to make peace.

So many people in our world,

They want peace of mind.

And they search for peace of mind outside in the world,

Finding a partner,

Finding wealth,

Finding comfort in the pleasures.

You find you don't discover peace of mind that way.

Whether you're healthy or sick,

Young or old,

Whether you're successful or infamous,

Any time,

Any place you can sit down,

Just close the eyes and make peace.

You find that there you have all the peace of mind you want.

It's a peace of mind which is independent of health,

Of physical comfort.

It's a peace of mind which is independent of what's happening in your life.

Any time you can just stop,

Sit down in this moment.

Some time ago I gave a simile of,

It's like stopping,

Just sitting down.

It's like on a whole long journey you find a stone seat.

It's uneven,

Hard and cold.

You sit down there because you've got no other place to rest.

It doesn't look a likely place where you can get some comfort,

But it's just there so you sit down on this unpromising,

Cold,

Hard stone seat.

We call that the present moment.

You sit down there,

You do nothing,

You just stay.

This is good enough.

You find,

To your great surprise,

The longer you sit on that seat,

The softer,

The more comfortable,

The more warm it comes.

Until after 40 minutes,

This present moment which was hard and painful and hot and uncomfortable,

After 40 minutes of meditation,

The place where you sat is one of the most comfortable places in your whole life.

You have peace of mind.

It's your mind which creates the softness of where you sit.

It's the mind which creates the comfort in this moment.

The moment the body is just as it is,

It's the way our mind reacts to it,

The way we create it.

Peace is not there in the world.

Our mind creates the peace.

It creates the contentment,

It creates the freedom.

If it creates it,

It's obvious how that creation happens.

I make peace,

I make freedom,

I make comfort with every moment.

I just build up this energy of peace until that energy is so strong,

The mind is just so peaceful,

The body is so comfortable,

And life is so free.

Why?

Because my mind has made it that way through the practice of meditation.

So every moment in your meditation,

Be mindful,

Be kind,

Make peace.

You find you have all the peace you could ever want,

Peaceful,

Free,

Contented mind,

Even though your body is suffering.

The mind can still be totally free.

So that's a nice thing to be able to do.

And maybe now and again you do it right,

You press the right buttons,

And after a while when you press those right buttons,

You have these beautiful meditations,

That's where that little exercise in the end,

How do I feel,

Why do I feel this way?

As you learn what really works,

That type of letting go.

What do you mean by letting go?

Just let this moment be,

It's good enough.

You let go of trying to change,

Manipulate,

Fix up,

Alter,

Manage,

Change.

Stop all of that stuff which you do the rest of your life.

You try and change other people,

We try and change ourselves,

We fix things up.

But in our mind,

When we meditate,

We just leave it all alone.

We let it be as it is.

We let the stone seat,

So unpromising and uncomfortable,

We let it be.

And in that letting be,

In that kindness,

Gentleness and peace,

The stone seat changes,

A miracle happens.

This moment which is very hard to endure,

Because you say it's good enough,

Becomes the easiest thing in the world.

You're at peace when you let go of craving,

Changing,

Ill will,

Wanting things to be different.

That's the path of peace.

So has anyone got any questions about what's been said?

How to meditate?

All the talks which you give,

All the books which you write,

All the wise things which people actually say,

This is actually where you experience it,

You feel it.

So instead of just being a lecturer,

It's an exercise,

Like a laboratory experiment.

You do it right and this incredible peace and freedom and happiness and energy comes up into the mind.

You realize,

Wow,

There is something through these words and theories called Buddhism,

It works.

You get so happy and so peaceful and so free.

Of course,

I've been doing this for a long time,

So I understand the way my mind works.

You can work it.

So it's just a wonderful skill to have,

To be able to sit down and just from anywhere,

From any place,

In any situation,

Just make peace and have this beautiful,

Beautiful,

Peaceful,

Powerful,

Happy mind.

So,

Anyone got any questions yet?

Yes,

Thank you.

Inaudible So,

Someone who has had a lot of meditation practice,

Would you respond a lot differently in that situation?

Certainly you would.

Those people have been into sensory deprivation,

Darkened rooms,

No sensory stimulation.

What happens in those areas is they start thinking.

So they can actually stop sight,

Sound,

Smell,

Taste,

Touch.

They can't stop the mind proliferating.

Because they are not skillful in the use of their mind,

They proliferate and dream and fantasize and eventually hallucinate.

The energy of the mind goes into creating these false things.

They don't know just how to be still and peaceful.

You put a meditating monk or nun in that situation,

They come out just so still with a big smile on their face.

Oh,

Thank you,

That was wonderful,

Can I please stay another 48 hours?

That's actually,

If you know what meditation is,

You don't hallucinate.

You don't sort of,

Look I've been in sensory deprivation before.

Those of you who ever visit my monastery,

The monastery down at Serpentine when I'm not there,

Go look at my cave.

It's a sensory deprivation chamber,

Totally dark,

No sound,

Sort of nice even temperature.

And it's a great little place to meditate,

I love that place.

You don't go hallucinating in there.

I don't come out with wild eyes and just crazy and mad as a hatter.

So if you come out there just nice and peaceful.

Sometimes you spend long periods of time in those places.

I did a six month retreat once when I never spoke to anybody or saw anyone.

There was no much sensory stimulation there.

Although you know you did see the animals.

And I mean a few people thought,

My God,

Six months without talking to anybody,

Not seeing any human being.

Ajahn Brahm will be crazy,

His eyes will be wide like plates,

His hair will be long and he will be mad.

But of course,

He said,

I don't think I'm mad,

Am I?

No.

So you see just in there was sensory deprivation,

I just had a wonderful time.

So you know how to work the mind and make peace with it.

And get all of your satisfaction from stillness rather than from things.

You realize you don't need stimulation,

Instead you value peace.

Because you value peace,

Stillness,

Contentment,

Ease.

You know that so well,

You never disturb it with fantasies and hallucinations.

You just don't go that path,

You go another path.

I know that sometimes some psychologists,

Even I've had letters saying,

Can you do a research program with me?

We want to sort of do tests on you.

But you know then you feel like a guinea pig,

Not a monk.

But it's true,

If you were in those tests,

You'd have a wonderful time.

So maybe we could do like an Olympic Games once for monks,

See who can stay longest in the sensory deprivation chamber and come out totally sane.

Seven days,

Seven weeks,

Seven years with no hallucinations.

Totally,

Oh this is nice.

So yeah,

Some of the psychologists and psychiatrists,

Because they don't know meditation,

They don't know the still mind,

They make those assumptions which aren't true.

Only 48 hours,

That's nothing.

Is there any other comments or questions on this?

Okay,

It's a warm day.

So now we can,

It's almost quarter past,

So now we can,

Those of you who want to carry on in the sensory deprivation chamber of this hall,

Carry on.

You're not going to hallucinate.

Those of you who want to go and have a cup of tea,

Then you probably will hallucinate.

Please have a cup of tea.

Let's now finish off and do what we need to do.

So those of you who wish to,

You can bow three times to the Buddha,

Dhamma and Sangha.