Day 353/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

Hello and welcome to today's meditation session.

We do about 15 minutes of talking followed by about a 45 minutes sitting and then 15 minutes when I ask questions and usually very few people ask them.

Nevertheless,

Maybe now and again I do get a question.

If not,

I add Lib as we go along.

But in order to develop your meditation,

You can understand that you are focusing on something,

Whether it's focusing on the present moment,

Focusing on silence,

Focusing on the breath or whatever else is your meditation object.

I think you can appreciate,

To be able to focus on something,

You need to have some sort of glue to get you on to that thing and stay there for a long time.

You need some sort of attractive force to be able to pull you on that object and stay there.

Many times people try and employ will,

They decide they're going to make themselves meditate and they focus themselves on the breath.

It doesn't work usually because what happens if you try hard to focus yourself on something like the breath,

You just get tense and that tension sometimes creates headaches and people do.

In some traditions when they meditate,

Create headaches and they create tension and obviously that's not part of the calm,

Stillness and peace which meditation is supposed to supply.

Instead of using the willpower to engage your attention on this object,

You have to be a bit more skilful.

And the skilful means to engage with an object,

First of all,

Actually noticing what the obstacles to that object are.

In other words,

Not so much noticing what you're supposed to watch,

But what you're not supposed to watch.

So understanding the,

If you like,

The forbidden zone of that part of meditation.

When you understand what the forbidden zone is and then to understand or to appreciate or cultivate the idea that forbidden zone where you're not supposed to pay attention to,

It's just going to create you more trouble,

More problems.

So it's not that you're willing yourself on the object of meditation,

You're realizing just the negative consequences of going to what's not the object.

Examples,

Say the present moment,

You understand what is the forbidden area when you do present moment awareness.

That's obvious,

The past and the future.

But then you realize the negative consequences,

You know,

Focusing on the past and the future,

You do that all the time.

What does it do to your stillness,

Your tranquility,

Your peace?

No,

It really upsets you,

It just creates more agitation for the mind and takes you further away from the calm,

Peace,

Stillness which you crave.

So by understanding and making very clear what the forbidden zone is and then understanding its negative consequences,

That is a force which will be able to keep you on the allowable zone,

In this case the present moment,

That you need to push yourself on the present moment with will power.

So that's number one,

Understanding the forbidden zone,

Understanding its negative consequences and that will help you stay on the meditation object.

The other part and the one which I usually use is actually developing the appreciation for the chosen object.

An appreciation,

Gratitude,

Investing that object with some value,

Also tends to engage your attention on that object without having to use will power.

You convince yourself it's worthwhile,

It's wonderful,

It's lovely to stay in the present moment.

And obviously that those people who have done lots of meditation,

When you have had experience of peaceful beautiful states of meditation,

It's quite easy to convince yourself of the value of this place of focus for your mindfulness.

But those of you who haven't had too much experience in meditation,

Sometimes you just got to do a bit of a marketing campaign for yourself,

To convince yourself that it's really beautiful in this present moment,

It's a place of peace,

A place of freedom.

And it's not that hard to do that because present moment awareness or silence of the mind just watching the breath is a beautiful,

Restful,

Wonderful place for people to hang out.

You just need to market it to yourself first of all.

So that when you are starting your meditation,

Please appreciate what the value of these stages of meditation are.

Being in the moment,

Just resting in the here and now,

Having abandoned all this past and future business.

It's so nice.

It is like taking time out,

It's having a break,

It's giving yourself a sense of peace,

Peace of mind only happens now.

The future is born in this present moment,

If you cultivate this present moment,

You are cultivating success and happiness and health for your future.

It's important,

You value it.

And I also like that putting value in silence.

Because for many meditators,

The thinking mind is the biggest obstacle.

Obviously,

You should know that the thinking mind obviously creates the future and the past for yourself.

But the thinking mind is a big obstacle and even if you are in the present moment,

You start thinking about the present moment instead of feeling it,

Instead of knowing it.

And having made that distinction between the thought about something and the experience about it,

Being able to know what we mean by a silent awareness of something and the verbal description about it,

The next step is to understand the bare experience of something is far more valuable,

Far more accurate,

Far more profound in its meaning and even more happy in its flavour.

So instead of actually,

As we usually say in the metaphor,

Instead of going to a restaurant and eating the menu,

You eat the food.

Eating the menu stands for just noticing the thoughts about what's going on,

The verbal descriptions which go in your head.

Instead of paying attention and giving value to that,

Just we know what happens when we can experience something silently with attention in this moment as it's happening without this description of what just happened.

The bare experience,

We know what that means and we value it more.

When you start valuing the silent experience of now,

Then it starts to remain.

It stays with you.

You don't use force to try and stop these thoughts invading your mind.

You don't use willpower like some nightclub employing the bikies to stand at the gate and bash up the past or the future when they try and sneak in.

This is not a violent practice,

This thing we call meditation.

It's something which uses wisdom power rather than willpower,

Which ceases silence,

Gives it value,

Takes away the value from thinking and thereby the mind will,

As the Buddha said,

Leap to the silence.

It will incline towards it of its own because it recognises the higher value in the silent experience of life,

Especially during a period of meditation.

Again,

You have to,

To yourself,

Market the value of silence so the mind will incline towards it,

To condition yourself,

Even if you say brainwash yourself,

To value silence more than the thinking mind.

And it's the same when you start watching your breathing.

As I mentioned here many times,

The biggest mistake of many people when they do breath meditation is go to the breath meditation too soon when they're not ready for it,

When the mind is too agitated,

When it's running around too much in past and future thoughts and all sorts of other stuff.

If you try and put your mind on the breath too early,

You will find it's too much of a task.

The mind just does not want to stay there.

It's got too much momentum with thinking and pondering the past,

Worrying about the future.

You try and use willpower,

Yeah you can be able to stop it for a while but it won't be able to last.

You never sort of,

Using the simile of riding a car,

You never just slam on the brakes to stop.

You just go down the gears,

You stop gently so you don't do damage to your car.

In the same way,

We slow our mind down gently,

Slowly.

We do sort of that by doing practices like present moment awareness and silence first of all.

But I make the point you don't have to have perfect present moment awareness nor perfect silence.

You do these preliminary exercises to calm down the mind,

To stop it running around so fast,

To give it a sense of peace,

Not absolute peace,

But a sense of slowing down,

Rest,

Tranquillity so that when you pick up the breath,

It's not a difficult thing to watch.

Then you can start marketing the breath,

Investing happiness into it,

Which is why we have all these skillful means of making the breath appear to yourself as important and valuable.

Sometimes I use the simile of the breath being the vehicle which carries the air,

The oxygen which is a gift from the plants and the flowers and the trees into your body.

And after you use that oxygen and turn it into carbon dioxide,

That's the gift which the plants take up.

So every breath is a gift from nature.

Every breath out is a gift back to all that's green in the world.

Just thinking like that makes the breath more attractive.

You can have many other metaphors for yourself about the breath.

Whatever it is,

People sometimes say that breathing in this beautiful golden energy and breathing out all the negative stuff which is in your day,

Breathing in this fresh beautiful clean golden energy,

Light,

Whatever called oxygen,

Called the air and breathing out all the pain,

Sicknesses,

Whatever else.

By doing that,

You're actually investing the breath with some value,

It's important to you.

And when you do that,

You will find that because you've put value into the breath,

It's easier to watch.

You have done your marketing campaign.

Don't undervalue the power of those inner suggestions.

It makes the meditation much easier.

In a short while,

You're going to be sitting for 45 minutes and when you're sitting for that period of time,

You don't want to make it a struggle for yourself,

You want to make it worthwhile and get somewhere in this meditation.

And just marketing each of these stages by investing it with value,

Seeing its beauty,

Being grateful for it actually helps.

You're just telling the mind,

Come on,

This is worthwhile.

Stop messing around with all these silly thoughts about what's going on TV this evening or who said what are you on the way here.

When you market the meditation to yourself,

You find the mind does engage,

Not through willpower,

It engages because it's worthwhile engaging in it.

You want to.

When you want to,

You do.

When you do,

After a while,

You find that all of those marketing campaigns actually do produce the good,

Goods.

The present moment is a very peaceful place to stay.

The silence is awesome and the breath becomes so peaceful,

So productive of its inner happiness.

You really get into some wonderful meditations.

The joy of the meditation is also important to develop and also to look for that joy,

Look for that happiness.

When it starts to happen,

Never be afraid of it.

When it happens,

Well done,

Encourage the meditation to be happy because in the end,

It's the happiness which gives the greatest value to the experience of meditation.

It feels good,

It's nice,

It's wonderful.

Once you start to notice that part,

That aspect of meditation,

The happiness,

When you notice that the happiness grows and grows and grows,

And it's the happiness in the long term which grabs the mindfulness and keeps it attached to the object,

Keeps it fixed,

Keeps it still and that generates more happiness,

Which creates more stillness.

In the deeper stages of meditation,

The stillness and the joy support each other,

Taking each other deeper and deeper into the profound depths of deep meditation.

But to get there,

The beginning steps,

We have to market each of these stages to ourselves to create that engagement of mindfulness with the objects.

This is how we engage,

Focus and get success in meditation.

Is there any comments about what I've just been saying?

Okay so here we go then.

Those people again who have come for the introductory class apologises for fifth Saturday of the month so there's no introduction class today.

If you are here for the first time or second or third time but you feel that 45 minutes is a bit long,

What I would advise you to do if maybe after 20 minutes you start to feel a bit sore,

Without making any noise,

You can open your eyes,

Change your posture so you don't disturb anyone in the room who's sitting for the 45 minutes.

Maybe take two or three minutes just sitting here,

Just moving your posture and then afterwards close your eyes and do another little session for yourself.

That way you don't disturb the people who are sitting here for the whole 45 minutes.

Okay so here we go.

So if you'd like to get yourself ready and close your eyes and get in your meditation posture.

So with your eyes closed,

Pay attention to your physical body.

It's important that you feel the body before you get into deeper meditation.

Not only does focusing on the body generate present moment awareness,

It also makes sure that you have put the body in a good position to begin with.

Those of you who have meditated many times know that you might get a pain or ache in the body which is very disturbing,

Simply because you were not careful enough at the beginning with your posture.

So spend these first couple of minutes just being with the body,

Caring for it and if you find that there's part of the posture which needs adjusting,

Please adjust it.

Stay with the posture a little bit longer.

Takes a while.

Don't rush.

When we move to the present moment,

Please identify the forbidden zone,

Past and future.

Understand why it's forbidden,

The negative consequences of wasting time on things which can never be changed have already happened,

Or wasting time planning for a future which is so uncertain.

Instead put all the value in this moment,

As how important it is to be now if you want to have peace,

How all meditation is based in this present moment.

Like a building has its foundations,

The present moment is the foundation of anything to do with meditation.

It's important,

It's valuable.

Convince yourself of that.

It's also a place of rest and you all need rest.

Bring your attention here,

No past,

No future,

Just now.

Feel the peace of the now.

Look for its freedom.

Recognizing the forbidden zones,

The why,

And the value in your meditation object.

Getting close to the end of the meditation now.

Please know how you feel.

Pay attention to the quality of the mind,

What this meditation has done for you,

What peace feels like.

Ordinary the gong three times.

When the gong finishes sounding for the third time,

It's a signal to come out from your meditation.

Th Mc Nse Ka Ly So we're at the end of the meditation.

Hopefully that people do see a change.

They get closer and closer to the thing we call peace of mind,

Stillness,

Real mindfulness,

Strong mindfulness,

Happy mindfulness.

Sometimes people come up and ask,

Well I was still in meditation,

How do I know that I wasn't falling asleep or how do I know I was going in the right path?

And one of the ways you can tell how your meditation went was how you feel afterwards,

Even when you open your eyes,

How much energy you have.

But not just the restless energy which sometimes we know through our daily life,

The peaceful,

Strong,

Clear,

Powerful mind.

That type of energy.

The energy where you really feel that you can do things,

You can think clearly,

You can make decisions,

You can see deeply into things.

Because the mind which develops these meditations,

Especially when the mind gets peaceful and blissful,

Gets very powerful.

And you can feel that power after the meditation finishes.

In classical Buddhism we call this like overcoming the hindrances.

It's like a hindrances to seeing clearly,

Hindrances to mindfulness,

Also the hindrances to stillness.

Once those hindrances have been overcome,

At least mostly,

There's nothing really to stop the mind focusing,

Seeing clearly.

Too often that if we want to follow a line of thought,

We can't follow it very long because the mind is too restless,

It jumps onto something else.

We just can't keep the mind on track.

But the training of the mind which you do in meditation,

By training the mind to keep on track in the meditation objects,

On the path of meditation,

You'll find that after you've emerged,

Especially if it's worked,

The mind is very,

Very strong.

It can take an idea and it can follow it through.

It can look at a problem and not be deviated until you find a decent solution.

And because of the mindfulness has been empowered,

Literally the mind can see more clearly,

It can see deeper using the old simile of the lights are being turned up so there's not darkness or shadows anymore.

Everything is highlighted and clear.

With a mind like that you can understand just how whatever you have to deal with in life you can see very clearly and very powerfully.

It is the empowerment of mindfulness,

Is one of the great causes of insight arising.

Insight is not something you do and decide that I'm going to find out the nature of these answers to the questions of life.

But insight is something which happens as a result of empowered mindfulness.

It's wonderful to investigate this quality of mindfulness with its different levels of power.

You'll find out just what you need to do to become wise and see things really clearly.

Anyone who's developed a very powerful meditation,

Come out afterwards to know the clarity and the power of the mind and recognise this is what I mean by the power of mindfulness when it's really energised.

You know that why sometimes we waste time thinking about things and assuming just through the power of thought we can find answers.

Even just this morning I was reading the newspaper,

The Australian and in the magazine there,

There was some philosophers who were answering questions on the nature of happiness and is there a God?

It was just crazy stuff but these are philosophers which you pay for because they're employed by the universities.

I think they should get the sack.

They can think but they can't see.

In other words,

Their mind may be very rational and logical but the mindfulness is not powerful enough.

The mind is not strong enough to see deeper into the nature of these questions.

What I read in the Australian magazine,

Weekend Australian,

It was so superficial.

There's no depth to it at all.

This is why when the mind becomes powerful,

You can get that depth.

So the training you get in meditation,

The empowering of the faculties of the mind and the way you become more perceptive of the nature of things,

Training the mind in academia which is a lot of times training how to think instead of training how to see is not the way to find the right meaning.

When you get very still and the mind brightens up and the mindfulness becomes powerful like a big searchlight.

Wherever you point at,

You can see so deeply into things.

You literally got access to more data and a more powerful brain to sort it all out.

Simply the mindfulness empowered by stillness.

A classical way of getting insight from samadhi,

The stillness of the mind.

You see things as they truly are.

Through thinking,

You tire the mind out.

The only thing you see is surface phenomena.

This is a way of insight,

Stillness,

Power,

Deep seeing and all the time the mind is energised and happy.

What a wonderful way to become smarter than the best philosophers who write silly articles in the Australian.

Any comments or questions on this?

I hope there's no professors of philosophy in the audience today otherwise I'm done for.

Any comments or questions about that?

Yeah,

Go on.

Good,

Very good.

Told you so.

It's true because remember all the things which I said,

I try not to give too much instructions because you find skillful means yourself.

The simplicity is one of the beauties of the meditation which gives it value.

Once you see its value there,

Oh wow.

Once you do get into the present moment and a bit of quietness,

It's easy to watch the breath.

For anybody who has trouble doing breath meditation or you think I can't watch the breath,

Because you haven't prepared the mind properly and you're just forcing it.

You say,

Come on,

You watch the breath or else.

Just control freak.

That never works.

So you did a very wise signal,

The simplicity of just being in the moment,

Oh this is so nice.

And once you get that,

Oh this is really nice attitude of mind.

Then everything comes together.

Well done.

Yes,

Once.

Yeah.

Where it goes?

Okay,

It goes into these incredible beautiful lights in the mind.

Just when the body disappears because whenever there is stillness,

Things disappear.

That's the result of stillness because the brain is only wired as they say these days to notice changes.

Our sensory apparatus notices contrasts.

So if there is a common sound,

Constant sound,

It disappears after a while.

In Zen monasteries,

You used to look at a wall with your eyes open,

Facing this ordinary white or whatever colour wall and you find the wall would disappear.

There was nothing mystical.

Whatever you stare at long enough,

Because nothing is moving,

Nothing for the brain to do,

It just turns off.

So when you're still,

Sight,

Whenever you close your eyes,

The first thing you see is blackness if you notice that.

And after a while,

Blackness,

Nothing is going on,

It's stable and sight turns off.

Hearing is a constant hum,

The traffic in the background,

After a while you can't hear it anymore.

Taste of saliva in your mouth,

Smell of the people around.

We do have smell,

Ask any dog.

There is a huge amount of smell in this room.

Because it's constant,

We don't notice it.

And then the body,

We keep it still.

We don't move it.

And after a while,

If you're comfortable enough to begin with,

And it's not great aches and pains,

After a while the body just disappears.

Stillness means this big part of the burden of life,

Dealing with sight,

Sounds,

Smells,

Taste and touches,

Disappears.

Time disappears because you're still in the moment.

Brain turns off from time,

There is no future or past for you.

Which is why what happens when people get into meditation,

They don't know how much time has passed.

And then later on,

The mind starts disappearing.

Expanses,

It's the same as like,

I always use the similar present moment awareness.

Because this is a stage where many people have experience.

When you get into the moment,

There is no time there at all.

It's like you've been imprisoned in an impossibly small space between the past and the future.

A millisecond,

That's all there is in the now.

Looking at that direction,

You're squashed between the past and the future.

Once you get in there,

The experience is you've got all the time in the world.

In no time there's infinite time.

I'm not just saying this to sound mystical.

This is actually an experiential truth.

In the moment,

There is no time,

No past,

No future,

You're squashed.

But the feeling is you've got all the time in the world,

It's expansive.

The feeling of expansion is because there's no pressure on you.

There's no boundaries.

We create those boundaries and in stillness,

The boundaries also disappear.

And just perception comes afterwards of freedom.

No boundaries,

No problems,

Stillness,

But not false stillness.

It's beautiful,

Free stillness.

You can't,

Imagine holding yourself absolutely still.

That's intolerable.

But when you meditate,

You're so still and it's natural,

Easy,

Free.

It just happens.

And that's only the start of the amazing things which happen in meditation.

So this is where the happiness and the stillness,

You get so incredibly still.

More still than you could ever imagine possible.

The world,

Just not the world outside being still,

The world inside being still.

And that's freaky.

When I was a young man in London in the 60s,

I used to have these rock concerts and I used to call them freak outs.

That was the word in the 60s.

I used to go to the freak out in Alexandra Palace in North London.

That was great,

But that was nothing to do with meditation.

It was really freaky,

Still and powerful and energised.

Okay,

So there you go,

The amazing power and joy and depth and oomph when you really get the meditation going.

You know how to do it,

Just put the value in,

Get it to a certain stage in the meditation.

Once you get there,

It just takes over.

You just sit there and all these amazing things happen.

You just got to get to that point where it starts to get very happy and joyful and just takes over.

Then you're awake.

When that does happen,

Just go for it.

Never interfere when things start going well.

Going well because you've let go,

You've done all the right things,

Well done,

Shut up and enjoy the ride.

Okay,

The ride is over today because it's gone past 4.

15.

We now can pay respects to the Buddha,

And if you want to stay behind and ask some questions,

You're most welcome to.