Good morning,
Good afternoon,
Good evening.
I don't quite know where I'm sitting here,
But I'm quite aligned.
But I'm sure you'll forgive me.
Okay,
So we're going to launch straight into a quiet sitting.
A few pointers from myself,
And then I'll say I want to read a little something from Charlotte Joko Beck around silence and stillness,
Because really that's it.
Okay,
So we'll just start off with a few words from her.
For Charlotte Joko Beck,
Silence and stillness were not mystical states to chase.
They were the natural background of life that becomes obvious when we stop being absorbed in our thoughts and reactions.
Her teaching is very simple and very practical.
And she doesn't mean the absence of sounds.
The silence that she's talking about and the stillness is just the hearing.
Without the interpretation,
Without the labelling,
The naming,
The comparing.
Is that the number seven,
Boss?
It's a bit late.
I'm sick of this.
More traffic noise.
It's just that initial,
And that's where we want to be going.
It's called direct experience.
Okay.
We'll sit for about 15 minutes.
It's not about you doing something here.
Strangely enough,
It's not really about you.
Don't think about that,
It'll drive you mad.
It's not about ego.
So don't try to change anything.
Just relax and rest in this moment.
What are you listening to?
Mind or life?
Where's your attention right now?
Are you drinking from the thought bar?
Taking a few shots of whatever?
Just leave the bar and come back home to presence.
To hearing,
Feeling.
What's happening?
No need to tell yourself,
That's just a prompt to return back.
There's a sense of relief,
Just being in silence,
In stillness.
Or if there's frustration,
Then you're at the bar.
You're listening to thoughts.
And it's just an interpretation.
Okay,
So just carry on if you wish.
Or if anybody has a question,
Please,
Or an observation.
So I'm just going to read a few little things that I've found from what she's saying about silence and stillness.
For her,
The whole practice is about the interchangeable silence and stillness.
It's that does the work,
See.
You don't do the work,
We don't do the work,
We just have to turn up.
We set ourselves down quietly for 10 minutes,
20 minutes,
And then we get out of the way.
It's not about you.
You know what I mean by that?
The ego,
The ego mental image self that we have,
It's not about that.
Because that's illusory.
That's a misidentification.
So if something's illusory,
Something's an image,
Why would you try and improve an image?
It doesn't really exist in the way we believe it does.
That's what she's saying.
And all the traditions are saying the same thing,
Just in slightly different ways.
She describes Zen practice as returning to silence.
But not to mean eliminating sounds or thoughts.
She meant becoming aware of the moment itself.
Sounds,
Sensations,
Breathing,
Rather than being lost in the mental commentary.
It's so simple,
It is so utterly simple that we miss that.
A mental commentary is just that,
It's a mental commentary.
It's not reality itself.
The thoughts are real,
But what they're saying isn't.
This is the little we start to see.
The description is not the described.
I can describe a cup to you,
But I couldn't pour water in it.
You could think about an apple all day long,
But you couldn't eat that imaginary apple,
It wouldn't sustain the body.
Just so simple,
It becomes so obvious how we've taken thoughts,
What thoughts are saying to be reality.
And we've learned it from around about the age of 3,
4,
4 years of age.
And underneath,
Language.
Language is beautiful,
Don't get me wrong.
The most enlightened being in the world uses language.
It's not that we don't use it,
It's beautiful.
And absolutely necessary for communication.
But if we don't know what the concepts really are,
That's where we suffer.
Me,
It's a concept.
I,
It's a concept.
Useful.
It's a sound.
I,
Me.
What's it pointing to?
In reality.
That's what she's talking about.
Next.
Where's next apart from the word?
To describe it,
What do you have to do?
You have to use more words.
Well,
Next is blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah.
More words.
Come beneath the words,
Just stay there.
And something will be revealed.
And words remain to be used.
This simple awareness begins to reveal a natural silence beneath the constant thinking.
And that's peace.
It's a peace.
It's a peace that we're all looking for.
But you can't find it in words.
That's why we search for decades.
I've done it.
Trying to find the right concept.
The right description of reality.
That must be it.
It's like this.
All I have is words.
When we sit still,
The first thing we notice is how noisy the mind is.
Thoughts about past,
Worries about the future,
Judgments about ourselves,
And others start pouring in.
But Joko Beck,
This is not a problem.
It is the point of practice.
Stillness exposes the habits of mind that usually ruin our lives.
So all this thinking is ruining our life.
That's why we suffer.
When we see them clearly,
More and more clearly,
They start to lose their grip.
It's a falling away.
It's an undoing,
Guys.
It's not a creation.
It's not a development.
It's an undoing.
Which is tricky to get handled because we're hardwired to try.
Joko warned that Zen,
Stillness,
Is not emotional repression or rigid control.
It may look calm from the outside,
But it's actually very alive awareness.
So it's not going into one of these swoons.
That's not it.
It's being alive to the moment.
I used to do all that.
I used to turn the lights down low so I could get really calm.
I did that.
I saw others doing it in retreat centres.
Trying to get to this place of no experience or whatever we were trying to do.
I don't quite know what we're doing.
But that itself is pure calmness,
True serenity.
One of her favourite phrases was nothing special.
She emphasised that awakening is not some dramatic mystical experience.
It's simply the ordinary moment,
Seen without the filter of the constant thinking and interpretation.
I think that's wonderful.
Just so clear.
It turns everything on its head,
We thought about.
It turned everything on its head for me about meditation.
I thought about getting to the top of the mountain.
And when she said listen to the traffic.
I knew there was something in it but I didn't quite get it at first.
Listen to the traffic.
Just feel around the face.
Label the thoughts.
Thinking or having a thought.
It's not working.
I'm not doing this right.
Having a thought.
I'm not doing this right.
It's just a thought.
They're not really pointing to anything.
If you don't believe the thought what's its power?
It doesn't have anything.
It doesn't have any power.
And you hear something like what she's saying here.
You get up off your seat.
Off we go to the races again.
Off we go.
She said it's not a problem.
That's the point of practice.
I haven't got much time left.
A few techniques,
Methods.
When you get lost in thought,
Is there having a thought?
Just ask yourself what's prior to a thought?
Don't answer it.
What comes after a thought?
Don't answer it.
Come back to the senses.
Okay guys.
Thank you.
Have a good weekend.
Bye-bye.
