Day 110/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

It's because people go down on holidays,

Especially this time of the year,

Just to relax,

To get away from it all,

Just have some peace in their life.

And you don't need to go down to Esperance or Albany or Margaret River to get that type of peace,

Get that type of peace in Nollamara,

In the Buddhist center and learn how to relax the body so deeply.

And it feels delightful,

It feels at ease.

When it starts to feel at ease like that,

That delight which comes up is an important thing to remember because meditation,

When it's done properly,

Is very delightful.

This is just the start of the happiness which comes from meditation.

It feels just so good.

And number two,

Please don't be afraid of happiness.

For some reason or other,

And I really can't figure this out,

For some reason or another people have the misconception that no pain,

No gain.

That's a stupid thing.

In meditation it is just no pleasure,

No depth.

In other words,

No delight in the beauty and the happiness of a relaxed body.

And you never get to that relaxation.

So when the body does feel delightful,

Please focus on that delight.

And the body gets even more relaxed.

And when it gets more relaxed,

The next thing which happens is the body vanishes.

It's not a problem anymore.

It's the business has been done.

The body has been calmed.

And then,

As you heard me on Friday night say,

The next thing is to realize the peace-o-meter.

These are really weird words which you try and invent and you try and point people to the first important thing to watch inside the mind.

You know it's hard to know a thing but you know its characteristics.

What is a garden?

A garden is measured by the trees and the flowers and the bushes and the paths inside that landscaped piece of nature.

That's how we know it's a garden.

What is a mind?

A mind is where peace or agitation live.

When we start looking at how peaceful we are,

How agitated we are,

We're starting to observe our mind.

But we're also observing the most important part of the mind in this stage of meditation,

How peaceful is it.

Once you know what peace feels like,

I mentioned this on last Friday night,

Yesterday,

Sometimes people can spell the word peace,

They can talk about peace,

But do they really know what peace is?

You feel that peace,

You get to know her very,

Very deeply.

Once you get to know peace and what causes peace in the mind,

And what disturbs it,

That gives you so much amazing instructions for your meditation path.

Doesn't matter what type of meditation you are pursuing,

The norm starts with a relaxed body and a peaceful mind.

And to develop that peace in the mind is not that difficult once you know what you're supposed to be watching.

Once you look with mindfulness,

That is where wisdom comes from.

You learn simple insights,

What disturbs your mind,

What causes the mind to be peaceful.

You don't believe what people like me,

Monks,

Say,

You don't read the books and see what the experts say.

It's how you feel,

Your own experience.

And then you find simple things which you've heard so many times before,

But then it's your own knowledge,

Your own experience,

Then it is real for you.

Things like being in the moment,

No past,

No future.

I don't know why people just,

They get caught up wanting to disturb themselves.

This present moment isn't that bad.

In fact it's gorgeous being here,

Enjoying this moment.

Why is it that people can't do this?

I was too busy,

Got too many things to do.

No,

You're not,

That's an excuse.

I do lots of stuff,

Got lots of responsibilities,

But when I want to stop,

I can stop.

And I take the opportunity to stop,

It's not just,

I can do it sometime later,

I do it now.

And when I stop,

The mind gets so powerful and delightful.

When the body relaxes,

It feels delight.

When the mind relaxes,

That feels especially delightful.

You've got the joyful present moment.

Other things which you read about,

Which people teach,

About watching the breathing,

That comes up by itself,

When it's ready.

The joyful breath,

The blissful breath,

That comes up.

Even when I was talking about,

Did I talk about that last night?

No,

I don't think I did.

The emitters and stuff,

That is also just comes up by itself.

It happens naturally.

That's what people sort of tell me.

I know that from my own experience,

But when they just do these relaxations,

They just get blown away by just how peaceful and calm this mind can be.

And how delightful it is,

How joyful.

These wonderful deep meditations.

And that's a signal to you that you are getting into this path of meditation,

Getting so much happiness out of it,

For free.

You wonder why don't I do more of this meditation,

It's so joyful.

Much better than watching the TV,

Or checking up on your emails,

Or checking up on anything else.

Check up on the inner happiness,

The peace,

The stillness,

Which is right there for you,

Anytime you want,

Wherever you want.

People are asking me a couple,

Two days ago,

Thursday night,

I had to give a zoom talk at the London Buddhist Society about meditation.

And just a normal question,

What if you live in a very busy place,

And it's very hard to find some silence and peace,

Physical.

And that's our modern world,

But it doesn't stop here.

I remember the times,

The times which I record and described,

I was just arriving at Sawanabhumi Airport in Bangkok,

And had an hour,

Not to kill,

Because that's a terrible word to say,

An hour before my car would be taking me off to some conference.

And the person who met me said,

Well what do you want to do for an hour?

I said I'll just meditate.

So we're here,

Because we're right in the concourse,

Which was so busy,

So noisy.

Hundreds of people,

You know,

Arching their mobile phones,

Announcements on the PA,

People just shouting at each other to greet one another,

Hundreds of thousands of people in that concourse.

And I said no,

This is fine by me.

And I just sat down quietly,

Closed my eyes,

And I did what I call create a bubble around yourself.

Just imagine this bubble protecting me,

Outside is my body and my mind,

Outside is the world.

And soon,

Just the world recedes from you.

You can sort of hear the noise,

But it's like a long distance away,

When in many people's truth it's only a few feet away from you.

You go to nice peaceful meditation,

Because you delight,

The delight pulls you in,

Peace,

Happiness,

Which means that things just don't disturb you.

So this is actually part of our meditation technique.

So that was just a little introduction to calm everybody down,

I hope.

I've not sent them to sleep,

So I better stop now.

And now we can actually do the meditation.

Guided meditation for the first few minutes,

More than that,

Actually about 10 or 15,

20 minutes,

And I'll be quiet,

Allow everybody to carry on,

And afterwards we do the Q&A.

Okay,

That's good.

So for those of you who want to have a bit of a stretch or something,

You can do that.

If you want to have a scratch,

Don't scratch yet,

Wait until people have got their eyes closed,

Then you can scratch anywhere you want.

I can't though,

I say that to others,

But I can't,

Because there's a camel on me.

It's not fair.

So here we go.

So closing your eyes,

And I'm just stretching my body.

A bit here,

A bit there.

When you meditate a lot,

You get to know your body.

Spend hours and hours and hours,

Year after year,

Understanding just how your body works.

And of course my body will be different than other people's bodies.

I understand how my one works.

You understand how your one works.

You feel it.

Starting with just a general set up of your meditation position,

Not the same every time.

Once you set your meditation position up reasonably well,

Then you go into more detail,

Become more refined.

So I usually start with my legs.

As I teach you,

So I practice myself.

I just make this up.

It doesn't come from a book,

Is what I do.

Get the legs nice and comfortable.

I check them.

I ask,

Feet,

How are you?

Calves,

Knees,

Thighs,

How are you all?

Because I regard each part of my body as a friend,

A colleague,

Which I will live with all my life,

And I will care for them all.

Without my legs and my body and my arms and head and all the organs,

What will I do?

So I look after them all.

And how I look after them,

I just ask,

How are you?

What is my little trick of establishing mindfulness on my legs?

Legs,

How are you?

And I mean it.

I start to know feelings in my body,

Feelings in my legs.

And I can check them.

Because it's not just mindfulness,

It's caring as well.

What can I do to make you more happy?

Legs.

And I feel them.

I pretty quickly get to know that the legs are fine.

The knees,

People get sore knees.

I look at the knees and relax them.

Even if you're not supposed to be able to relax that part of your body,

Just thinking thoughts of kindness,

Calm,

Relaxation,

Ease,

It tends to create the effect of everything down there is loose and peaceful.

Kindness works.

Where I go the next stage when I move up from my thighs is to my butt.

You're sitting for long periods of time,

Your bottom becomes sore.

So I make sure at the very beginning I put my butt in the best position.

I'm aware of it,

Picking up all the sensations,

As many as I can know.

If I wanted to fidget,

I'd fidget right now.

My bottom is pretty good.

And you go up your back.

Because people do have back aches,

Often when they're meditating.

It really disturbs them.

So I check that everything is in place.

Awareness soon gets to know what to look out for.

And the kindness can adjust things.

And even inside my body,

In the afternoon,

It's usually pretty relaxed.

Because marks are being finished on the before midday.

So now there's basically nothing going on in my guts and my tummy.

It's nice and peaceful.

The rest of my organs can't feel any aches or pains anywhere.

Everything is nicely at ease.

If you don't have that feeling of ease,

Just zoom in on that part of your body which is still aching or painful or tense.

Zoom in on it,

Get to know it,

Care for it.

And you usually find the discovery of what relaxes a small part of your body inside.

You can feel it opening up.

And often people feel energy come into that part of the body.

And how many times when people get into really quiet meditation,

They actually feel part of their body warming up just a part.

Big heat in their shoulder,

Just one side,

Not the other side.

And you ask,

Why?

Because you've had an injury there.

And because you're relaxing,

Your body is taking the opportunity to send a lot of good energy there to heal.

It's happened so many times when I've taught meditation,

The hot spots in your body.

And when that happens,

Whoa,

Yeah,

Carry on.

This is much better than going to surgery.

And get up to your shoulders.

Relax,

Really,

As much as you can.

No one is watching you,

So it doesn't matter what your posture is like.

No one is going to criticise you or judge you or give you marks out of ten.

Relax to the max.

And then you go down your arms.

Checking out everything is in a good place,

How your arms want to be,

Not how you want them to be.

I often do,

I ask my parts of my body,

Right now to my hands,

Hands,

Where do you want to be positioned?

I'm not going to tell you what to do,

I'm going to ask you what you want.

I do that,

My hands say,

Nope,

I'm going to change their little posture there.

Because I do that,

Follow it straight away,

So my hands can adjust.

Are you okay now?

Yep.

You may think this is being stupid asking parts of your body and getting answers,

But it works,

At least for me.

I'm going to go up to my shoulders again and up to my neck.

I just move my head to left to right now,

Just a bit of a stretching exercise for my neck,

To make sure it's in the best position possibly.

Because when I meditate I don't want to move anything,

Get things just in the right place to begin with,

And spend time getting things in the right place.

And it's like my body says,

Thank you,

And relaxes.

And lastly,

Over to my face.

Sometimes you can tell a person's meditation by just how relaxed the muscles of their face are.

They're not struggling or striving,

They're just enjoying their peace,

The stillness,

The calm of this moment.

The muscles around the eyes,

The nose,

The mouth,

All just get loose.

I feel those muscles right now.

I'm aware of them,

And I'm relaxing them as much as I can,

I still have to talk.

And once the face feels at ease,

I'm now aware of my whole body,

Like joining everything up.

It's sitting here,

Just mightily relaxed,

Enjoying this moment.

I don't look for the delight,

I wait for it to arise.

It doesn't take long and I can recognize it.

For me it's arising quite strongly now.

A delight of relaxation.

And you will find that when you notice the delightful feeling of your relaxed body,

More relaxed than usual,

It's not totally relaxed,

But it's mightily relaxed.

We notice that delight,

The relaxation goes deeper,

Increases.

You're more relaxed than you thought was possible.

You just linger there for a while,

Saying to myself,

I deserve this.

Fine,

Enjoy the delightful relaxation.

And when I'm ready,

I look at my peace-someter.

How peaceful am I right now?

Giving it a number from 1 to 10,

1 is really peaceful,

10 is really agitated.

It's not so important what that number is,

Just you get some idea of that part of your mind which registers peace or its opposite.

As you're looking there,

How do you relax that mind,

Make it more peaceful?

You find it's pretty much the same how you relax parts of your body.

Most important thing,

Kindness.

Thinking,

Phew,

That really disturbs everything.

Just writing an essay about what's happening,

Your comments,

Your inclusion series,

That's really disturbing.

Keeping you quiet inside,

In the silence.

You're aware that you should be getting stronger,

More poised,

More out of control,

Don't be afraid of letting go of control.

Peace is beautiful.

You try to capture peace and it will slip through the bars of your cage and escape.

Don't try to take photographs of your meditation,

It's a metaphor of course.

Let this moment go so another moment can come in.

You're just enjoying every moment,

Simple,

No past,

No future,

Just now.

Soon,

Breath will come in by itself,

Breathing in peace,

Breathe out,

Let go.

Just go really,

Allow your mind to go as deep as it wants.

You just be this observer,

Not doing any work,

Just seeing what happens.

And trusting in this moment,

In silence,

The mind will develop in meditation.

I'm now going to be quiet.

When I speak again I'll be close to the end of the meditation period.

When I speak again I'll be close to the end of the meditation period.

When I speak again I'll be close to the end of the meditation period.

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