I’m going to ring the gong now. And ring the gong, and when it’s finished sounding. Quietly, slowly, open your eyes. But don’t move any other part of your body. Just open your eyes and know how you feel To know the result, to adjust.
Ten minutes of meditation. The peace in the mind and the peace in the body. And then come out of the meditation. And move your body again and get comfortable. So that is a taste, the best thing we call meditation.
There’s many things which you would have experienced during those few minutes. One of the things you’d experience is how difficult this meditation can be sometimes. You just want to watch the breath, choosing our object,, but we do other things. You may become aware of that which I call the experience and the commentary, and how addicted we are to the commentary, and how little we know of experience. We think about life, very rarely do we live it.
And hopefully that you would have known through experience at least some degree of peace and some degree of stillness of body and realize that that which we call peace of mind is a great joy and happiness and that peace in the body is a great delight, a great pleasure. You may often notice every time you move or scratch or fidget, why? The reason why you move or scratch your fidget is to get rid of a pain or a disturbance or a discomfort. This body is full of discomfort. That’s why we can’t keep it still.
The only time you can actually rest this body is through meditation, when the mind goes inside and forgets about this body. That’s why you can sit still for such a long time. The itches, the aches, and the discomfort disappear when we don’t don’t give them attention. That’s how we rest the body. Even when we’re sleeping, we’re in constant movement.
In meditation, we leave the body alone. It settles down by itself. So these are some of the things you may have noticed in this meditation. And gained at least some sense of what I mean by peace of mind and tranquility of the body. It is important that one can get the sense of what these things mean because afterwards it will give one the incentive to meditate more and more, to develop that which we call peace of mind.
There are many, many things worth developing in this world. Peace of mind is one of the most important. And to illustrate this, I’m going to finish with a story. It’s a story I’ve told many times here. It’s a story of the philosopher and the old sea captain.
This was a story of many years ago in the days when travel was by these big ocean liners, the days before airplanes and seven four sevens. There was professor going to give a series of lectures in another country. He was traveling by one of these big ocean liners. After dinner one evening, he went up on the deck, and he saw an old sailor who had obviously sailed the oceans for many, many years. And the professor, being in a good mood, went up to that sailor and saw the sailor looking into the waves.
And he went up to that sailor and said, old man, you must have sailed these oceans for most of your life. Yes, said the old man, for over sixty years. You must know everything about what’s in these waves, both the currents and the animals and the fishes which live and dwell beneath you. Because you traveled on these very waves and oceans for so many years, you must be an expert on marine science. The old man said, actually, no.
I don’t know a thing about marine science. What? Said professor. All these years you’ve sailed on these oceans, you never bothered to learn about the life beneath you. What a stupid old man.
What a waste of a life. And that’s what the professor said as he walked disgusted away. The second night after a particularly good meal, he went on deck again. And what did he see? The old sailor again.
He thought he’d give the old man a second chance. And he saw the old man looking up at the stars. He said, well, at least this old sailor must know something about astronomy. After all, the stars guide the ship and tell them where they are. So we’re not next to the old man and said, do you see that star over there and that constellation named this?
And the old sailor said, what are you talking about? What, said the professor, in all these years sailing the oceans, have never bothered to learn about the heavens above you, about the stars and their positions? No, said the old man. What a stupid old man, said professor. What a waste of a life.
What a waste of a life. The professor walked away disgusted again. The third night at sea, after a particularly good meal, it was such a beautiful night on the ocean. A very calm and warm breeze was wafting over the waves. And the professor was in such a good mood, he thought he’d give the sailor one more chance.
After all, it was the winds which drove the ship. Then too strong winds would be a storm which could damage the ship. The winds were too light. They’d make no promise. The winds were important for sailing a ship.
And actually, the professor was a professor of meteorology. So I went up to the old man and said, I understand now. You don’t know anything of astronomy, nor marine science, but obviously, I know now you must be an expert on the winds. You probably know more about meteorology than I do, having experienced these things rather than study them in the university. Actually, said the old man, I know nothing about meteorology.
What, said a professor, all these years at sea, who never bothered to learn about the winds around you which drive your ship, never bothered to learn about the stars above you which guide your ship nor the waves beneath you. What a stupid old man. What a waste of a life. What a waste of a life, said the professor as he walked away, determining never to speak to this fool ever again. The fourth night at sea, he didn’t even go up on deck.
He didn’t even have dinner because it was one of those rough nights at sea. And Professor had quite a weak stomach. He decided to stay in his cabin. As the night wore on, the storm grew stronger, and the ship was rolling quite heavily. And the professor became afraid.
His fear go to a crescendo, and he heard people running outside his cabin door. He opened the door, and who was outside? For the old sailor man. The old sailor stopped and turned around to professor and said to professor, in all these years, professor, And I know that within you there are many important things in this life to learn, but to swim is very important if you’re gonna sail in a ship. If you’re going to live in this world, peace of mind is important.
Make sure you can swim. Now that finishes the talk about meditation today. Actually, maybe before we finish, are there one or two questions anyone would like to ask before we finish off? Yes. Okay.
You’re noticing your dose off. I always say that dosing off is a good sign. It means that your mind is peaceful. It’s not good enough because the mind is peaceful, but you’re not there to enjoy it. So keep the peace, but, like, make yourself aware so you can enjoy that peace rather than missing it all.
So it just needs a little bit more sharpness of mind, a little bit more of what we call awareness. Brighten the mind more and then you can be peaceful and be fully aware of it at the same time. It’s like going on a beautiful holiday and spending all the time in bed. Has anyone got another question you’d like to ask? Yes.
How often should you meditate? How often should you eat? Every day. Good. Many times a day.
You why do you eat? You eat because it keeps you healthy in the body. If you eat too much, you know, you get fat and it’s not good for you. Eat just enough till you get full and you have more energy. If you don’t meditate, you’re not getting enough food for the mind.
It’s one of the reasons that people feel ill and have stress because they’re having no food for the mind. They feel the body, they exercise it, but we don’t feed and exercise our mind. So give the mind as much meditation as it needs to feel healthy, and only you can answer that question. But to start with, in the next week, if you feel that this meditation is interesting and you want to continue with it, I’d advise you to do ten minutes every day. And then next week, we can come back, and you’ll have some experiences and some problems which you’ll come up with, which I’ll be talking about next week.
So if you’re interested in this meditation, you really want to get the the most benefit from it, I’d encourage you to find, you know, just ten minutes a day to meditate. If you have a very busy day, then you really need to meditate a lot. There’s a very famous saying. A monk once said that there’s not much time, therefore, we must go slowly. When you go fast, that’s when you waste time.
You make mistakes. If you have a very busy life with much responsibility, you have to learn how to go slowly, And meditation is a way of learning to go slowly. After a while, you’ll find that you value the peace of meditation. And every opportunity you have at least once a day, maybe twice, maybe three times, you will want to meditate to enjoy peace of mind. You will find that a few moments of peace which you give yourself during the day will create a sense of being able to cope with the difficulties of life.
A good meditation afterwards, someone can call you all sorts of names. Things can go wrong. Life can become difficult. And you can cope with it all because you’ve got peace in your heart. After a while, if you have no peace in your heart, you can’t cope with anything.
You have a breakdown. So that’s my answer. It’s not a direct answer, but it’s an answer which is useful for each one here. So we have to leave the questions now. If you have any individual questions you want wish to ask, you can please come up and ask them of me individually.
There are some notes which are available at the back, which you can take away with you about this session. There are some things which I’ve covered and some things which I have not. Those things which I haven’t covered on those sheet of notes, I will cover next week. And next week, we’ll be covering those things and also covering mainly some of the problems in meditation so that one knows these problems and knows how to overcome them so that one can proceed in one’s meditation as swiftly and trouble free as possible. There’s also some tea and coffee, which and biscuits, which are available in the room, but just opposite on your light as you go out.
And so thank you for coming, and happy meditating. To the methods of meditation, giving some idea of their purpose and also the way to practice that which we call meditation. In particular, the type of meditation I’m going to be teaching here is a very old form of meditation, actually the meditation which was used by the Buddha himself. It is a meditate four sessions, I’ll be expanding on the different types of meditation, bringing other types apart from the meditation on the breath, and giving one a a means to practice this art which we call meditation. I would add, I would start by saying that the meditation which we’re going to do here is going to be aimed, first of all, at calming down the mind.
When I’m talking about the mind, I’m talking about that inner world of yours. Part of the meditation will be done with the eyes closed. When you close the eyes, what are you aware of? What are you conscious of? When you close the eyes, you’ll be conscious of thoughts, emotions.
This is that part of the mind we’re trying to calm and make still. The reason why we’re doing this is because the mind is usually what we call out of control. Thoughts and emotions come up which we do not wish to be there. Sometimes we’re trying to concentrate or think on a particular aspect, and we cannot maintain our awareness on that train of thought. Other times, there’s thoughts which come up which we don’t want to be there in the first place.
And this should give us the indication that that which we call our mind is out of control. The mind is like the generator, the source of our emotions. It is the generator and the source of many of our activities, especially of body and speech. All of the words which we say, we think about, first of all, even though it may only be for a few moments. Those words are generated from the mind, and the actions too arise from this mind.
And if this mind is out of control, we find that our speech and our actions are out of control as well. So it’s important for human beings to know this mind and to somehow stop it being so out of control. One of the reasons why many people might be here today to meditate is to relieve the mental stress and also to relieve some of the physical stress, to get what we call a relaxation of body and a peace of mind. And that stress is caused by this thinking, this working mind, which is overactive. And the job of meditation is to calm all this down, to gain a state of peacefulness.
In order to illustrate what I mean by a state of peacefulness, I’m going to give you a simile, which I expect will be from your own experience. If you’ve ever been down by the ocean of an evening and watched the sun go down, or maybe gone out into a forest or a mountain somewhere, you may have gone to that place with many problems and worries, with many things to think about. But you sat there on the sand, say, watching the sun go down over the Indian Ocean. And because of the beauty of that experience, with the colors of the sun streaking across the ocean, You somehow forgot all the problems and troubles of your life. It’s as if the beauty of the sunset is so strong that it overwhelms the troubles, worries, responsibilities which one carried there.
As one watches the sun going down, many minutes might pass. And at the end of that sunset, one gets off from that beach, feeling that one has left a burden behind on that beach, feeling more relaxed, feeling more at peace. The reason is because instead of giving this constant attention to that which worries and troubles you, one has let go of that burden and the mind feels at peace. This simile of absorbing into a beautiful aspect of nature, in this case the sunset, is similar to this process of meditation. Instead of going to a beach and looking for a sunset, we’re looking at inside of ourselves, onto the breathing, onto the breath going in and going out, absorbing our attention in that and letting go and forgetting all of our problems.
Another simile which might give you an indication of what this meditation is about is a simile of a traveler carrying two suitcases. In life, you may have seen tourists or even yourself through the corridors of airports or even through the streets of town carrying two heavy bags. A person who carries two heavy bags soon gets tired. The bag in the left in the simile, you can consider to be crammed, packed tight with all of your past, all of your things which you’ve done, which you are still considering, you may feel guilty about, which you may still be unfinished business. One packs these into a bag which one carries in the left hand.
In the right hand is all of the anticipations and expectations of the future, crammed and stuffed into this very heavy bag. This is what we call our worries and our business in these two suitcases. One, we call the past. The other one we call the future. To be a responsible individual, we have to carry those suitcases now and again, but not all the time.
If one wishes to have some relief from these burdens we call life, we lay down those suitcases, we let them go, we put them down by our side and we rest our arms. You only have to put those suitcases down for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, and the pain in the arms disappears and one feels at ease. And then when one picks up those suitcases once more to carry them through the day, they feel lighter, easier to carry. It’s not that there’s less things in there, it’s because one has rested that which carried them, the arms, that they feel so much lighter. In this simile, the arms are like your mind.
And as already mentioned, the contents of those suitcases are the past and future. We keep carrying these things around day after day, hour after hour, carrying them even into our bed when we go to rest at night. It means that our mind gets tired. This is the cause of what we call stress. All we need to do is to be able to let those things alone, to put those things down.
The way of meditation is learning how to put those things down. And if one puts those things down, the concerns about the past and the future, one will find that the mind rests and gains this thing we call peace of mind. And after meditation is finished, one picks up those bags again and life feels much lighter. It’s important to remember that simile of those two heavy suitcases because it gives the important indication of where this meditation is focused. It’s focused on that which we call the present moment, just now.
The way of meditation is a way of focusing the attention in the present moment, keeping that which we call awareness here and now. It may seem an easy thing for you to do just to keep the awareness in one place, but you will find when we start to attempt meditation, as I said, because the mind is out of control, that you will not be able to keep the awareness centered in the present moment for very long at all. When you try just to bring the attention to the hearer and now, you’ll find after a few moments it will wander a long way away. When you close your eyes, you may start to bring the attention in the present moment, and you start thinking about the person next to you. I wonder how they’re getting on.
You start thinking about how many minutes have gone and how many minutes are left. You start thinking of the dinner this evening or where you’re going tonight. You start thinking of the holidays overseas which you may be going on soon. And before you know it, you’re thousands of miles away from here, many months from this present moment. The mind likes to wander off.
The wandering mind is a problem which stops us succeeding in this meditation. This wandering mind is, if you like, our enemy. So we have to notice what our enemy is, what stops us being peaceful, and we have to find a way to overcome it so that the natural peace of the mind is there for our taking. The way we overcome the wandering mind is first of all to know that it’s wandering. Very often we don’t realize just how far this mind travels because we have got no anchor, no reference point for our mind.
That is why in the meditation I’m going to be teaching shortly, we use the breath as the anchor. It is like a ship which is in the ocean. If you have got no anchor, no buoy to tie or to moor the ship to, the ship could be drifting in the currents, and it doesn’t realize it’s moving. It’s got no reference points, no marker to recognize it’s moving away. This breath of ours is what we use as a marker so that if the mind moves away and goes wandering off, we know that it’s not staying in the present moment but has wandered far away.
I’ll be mentioning the breath. I’m going to give you the first instruction in meditation now. Please breathe in once and out once with full knowledge. You can sit as you are. You don’t need to change your position.
Just breathe in and out once, fully mindful. Can you all do that? In meditation all you need to do is to do exactly that for say twenty or thirty minutes without missing one breath. Why is it you can do it with one breath, but you can’t do it for two or three? Three maybe, four perhaps.
Why can’t you do it for a hundred breaths one after another? It’s easy to do it once, isn’t it? The reason is because after a while the mind loses interest in what it’s doing. And also it forgets what it’s supposed to be doing. This is why that in this meditation there’s a couple of words I want to give you now which are very important words.
And the first of these words is what we call mindfulness. This is an important word in meditation, mindfulness. Mindfulness is being fully aware of what’s going on. Are you fully aware of what’s going on now? What is the feeling in your bottom against the cushion or against the chair?
Be aware of that for a few moments. Can you feel it? See how long you can be aware of that feeling. Soon the thought comes out, what am I doing this for? This isn’t meditation.
That thought which is coming up is what we call the wandering mind. What mindfulness does is it, you remember what you’re supposed to be doing. Stop all this thinking, I’m supposed to be watching the feeling in my bottom. The mindfulness is this little sign we keep in our mind which tells us what our task is supposed to be. The mindfulness remembers what we’re supposed to be doing and also makes it clear whether we’re doing that task or not.
So we try, first of all, in this meditation to establish this thing we call mindfulness, this clear awareness of what’s going on. The clear awareness of what’s going on is really just another way of saying, let’s keep the attention in the present moment, here and now, because what’s going on is what’s here and now. Even the thoughts of what’s going on here and now, you may notice, is just a description which happens a split second later. The thoughts describe what has just happened. To give another simile, which I like to use, have you ever seen a tennis match on the television?
If you watch it, you may not like tennis. You may like some other sort of sport. But if you watch, say, a tennis match on the television, have you ever noticed there are two matches going on? There is the match which you’re seeing on the screen and the match which you’re hearing through the loudspeaker. And they’re not the same match.
The match which you’re seeing on the screen is what’s actually happening. You’re seeing it for yourself. That which you are hearing through the loudspeaker is filtered through what we call a commentator. Now if there’s an Australian person playing on one of those matches and there’s an Australian commentator, then you’ll see that all of his shots are so wonderful and their positions are lucky. This is just like an example that the commentator will always have some bias.
The commentator in a tennis match is different from what you see on the screen. In the same way, the commentary which you listen to in your mind is different than the experience. What are you commenting on now? Can you hear the commentary, or are you aware of the experience? This is an important aspect of meditation because if you do not know the difference between the commentary, that which describes, that which is always giving orders, that which we call thoughts and judgment inside of our mind, if you don’t know the difference between the commentary and the experience, we’ll have no success in this meditation.
For this meditation, we have to put our attention on experience, not on this commentary. The commentary is not truthful, it’s biased, and also it’s thought which will take us on to many, many different things. Instead of the commentary, come back to experience. Now going to that feeling of your bottom on the chair or on the cushion. It’s hard to have a commentary on that because it is a natural feeling which you can’t say very much about.
That’s why I mentioned it, because for many of you, you’ll know that feeling as an experience, the feeling of your bottom on the cushion. The commentary would like to come in and say, this is painful, this is unpleasant, this is like this, this is something else. It’s a commentary which stops you being at peace. It’s a commentary which makes you move. It’s a commentary which takes you away from peace and relaxation.
So in this meditation, know the difference between the reality, the experience, and the commentary. When we’re going to be watching the breath, we watch the breath as an experience, just as you did a few moments ago, just breathing in once, breathing out once. Because it was new, you didn’t have much time to say anything about it. You watched it as it truly existed, as an experience, pure and simple. During meditation, the mindfulness, the awareness of what’s going on, has always to be very careful and be wary of the commentary.
Never give the commentary too much interest and put more and more attention on the bare experience. What is actually happening? How you feel? What you’re experiencing from moment to moment? And put little attention or interest into the commentary which comes up alongside.
What you put interest in eventually grows. If you put interest in the commentary, the commentary gets louder and louder and louder. If you put interest in the experience, the experience opens up and you become a more experiential person, feeling the world rather than thinking about it. Have you ever noticed we only think about things? Thinking about is like a satellite revolving around the planet, never landing, never going to the center.
Thinking goes around things. It never penetrates to its core. Experience penetrates to the core. So experience is a very important thing which we’re learning about in this meditation. Experiencing without commenting, making this thinking mind silent.
As we do this, if we put a lot of attention on the experiencing mind, the meditation becomes quite easy. All we need to do is just to know, to experience the feeling of the breath. When I say the feeling of the breath, it’s just what you notice when you breathe in once and breathe out once. It’s a feeling, it’s an experience. One of the other things we have to do in this meditation, one of the other important words, is called letting be.
Letting be means doing no work. Letting be means not forcing or controlling or giving all these orders. That’s what we do in normal life, is to give orders and try and control. Here in this meditation we let things alone, we let things be. In particular, you let the breath be, just as it is.
You don’t try and control it or make it anything different. Unfortunately, the nature of human beings is whatever they’re looking at, they want to get involved in. You go to someone’s house and you redesign it for them. You go to someone’s work and you say, that’s not the way to do it. This is the way to do it.
We always like to get involved in someone else’s business. The business of breathing is the business of your body. The body breathes very well without your attention. It’s been doing this for so many years and you haven’t been thinking about it and you survived so far, so the body must know something. In this meditation, let the body do the breathing.
All you need to do is just watch to be what we call the silent observer, someone who can just sit and watch the breath come in and go out. It’s just like sitting by the edge of the ocean. The waves come in and then they go away again. The ebb and flow of the ocean, they’re called the waves. When you’re sitting by the ocean, you know you cannot control those waves.
You cannot make them come in faster or bigger or go away at any great speed. They come and they go according to their own nature, not according to your will. In the same way, look at the breath as just like the waves on the ocean. They come and they go according to their nature. Your job is just to watch, to observe without getting involved.
If you get involved, it’s like a person sitting by a lake. And sitting by a lake, your job is supposed to be to try and calm these waves down. And how does a person try and calm these waves down on a lake? They put their hands in and try and smooth them all away, cutting the waves down. What does that do?
That creates more waves. That is not the way to calm the waves on the lake down. The way to calm the waves on the lake down is just to stand back and wait, and to create no wind, to create no disturbance. And the waves calm down by themselves. This is the way of your mind.
The difficulties, problems, the movements and the thoughts. Even the breath itself calms down by its own nature if you give it time. So we don’t try and control the breathing in this meditation. We just sit back, we let it be, and we watch. We watch very patiently until the breath settles down.
And the last simile I would like to use this afternoon is a simile. It’s a story which comes, an ancient Indian story, which describes meditation very, very well. It’s a story of the teacher who was teaching his students meditation to the practice of archery. He had three students who he thought had practiced meditation long enough, and he wished to test them out to see how concentrated, how stable and still their mind was. And so he got an image, or actually a stuffed bird, and put it on the branch of a tree a long way away.
He gave a bow and arrow to his first student and told the young man to concentrate his mind, to make his mind one with the targets with the bird on the tree, and when he was ready to shoot the arrow and see if he could hit it. After fifteen minutes the student said he was ready and his teacher, the master, asked him what he could see. Could he see the tree? No, all I can see is the bird on the tree. You stupid man, said the master.
He pushed him away and took the bow and arrow and gave it to the second student and told him to meditate and concentrate his mind until his mind was one with the object, the bird on the tree. After half an hour, the student said he was ready. The master asked him, can you see the tree? No, I can just see. I said, can you see the tree?
He said, no, I can’t see the tree. Can you see the feet of the bird? No, I cannot. What can you see? Can you see the wings?
No, I can’t see the wings, I can just see the head. You stupid meditator. He pushed him away and took the bow and arrow. And then he gave the bow and arrow to the third meditator and asked him to concentrate his mind until he’s one with the object. And when he concentrated his mind for an hour, he gave the signal and the master asked him, What could you see?
Can you see the tree? No, I can’t see the tree. Can you see the legs of the bird or the wings? No, I cannot. Can you see its head?
No, I cannot. What can you see? All I can see is his eye. Ah, you know about meditation. This is one pointedness of the mind on the object to shoot that stuffed bird right through the eye.
And he let go of the arrow and it went right through the target. Concentration is like this. If you put your mind on the object of the breath, at first there’s many other things you will see. Just like the student concentrating on the bird on the branch of the tree, at first he sees the whole tree and many more things, but he concentrates on the target, on the eye of the bird. More and more things start to disappear around the edges.
First of all, the tree disappears, and all he can see is the bird. As he concentrates more on the target he’s aiming for, as the body of the bird disappears and all that’s left is the head, as it concentrates more on the point which he’s aiming for, the eye, eventually everything else disappears and all you see is what you’re aiming at. This is the way of this meditation. If one is putting the attention on that which we call the breath, first of all when you start sitting you may be aware of the breath coming in and going out. You’ll also be aware of so many different things.
You’ll be aware of the sounds outside of you, the feelings in your body, and many, many thoughts part of this commentary. But as you sit for longer, if you sit longer and longer concentrating on the object, you’ll find that bit by bit these things will pass away and disappear. You’re letting them go as the mind focuses and centers in on the objects of your awareness. And the more you stay looking at the center, the more the things on the edge, on the outside, stay completely away. When you’re doing this meditation on the breath, which I’m teaching this afternoon, you’ll find that first of all, the people next to you will, as if it were, disappear.
They won’t go out the room, I hope. But what will happen is your awareness of them will disappear. Your awareness of everything else outside of you will disappear. You’ll just be left with your body sitting here meditating. Your office, your family, your home, your future and your past will disappear.
As you concentrate more and more on the center which is the breath, more and more will disappear until eventually all you’re left with is just the breath. When this occurs and all you’re aware of is just the breath going in and going out, it becomes a very peaceful experience. The mind is settled on one thing. The way of meditation is settling the mind on one thing. It’s only when the mind is on one thing one can call it peace of mind.
If the mind is going from one thing to another, it’s called business, it’s called movement, and it’s not what we call stillness. If we’re talking about stillness of the mind, it means a mind which is not moving. It means a mind which must be on one thing, not moving backwards or forwards. This is the stillness of the mind which has a quality of peace. If there’s much noise, it’s not peaceful.
If there’s orders, it’s not peace. If everything is still, when nothing is moving, That’s what we call the deep peace of mind. And that peace of mind brings the profound peace of the body. When the mind is still, the body settles down. And when the body settles down, it gets this marvelous tranquility, this rest of the body caused by rest of the mind.
And hopefully that some of you will experience a taste of this rest of body and this peace of mind during this meditation which we’ll begin in a few moments. But I’ll say one more thing just in preparation and that is about the posture, just the way one sits. It is not an important part of this meditation the way one sits. One can sit cross legged or one can sit on a chair. One can sit with one’s legs out.
The only important thing is that you can keep the body still. If the body moves, so does the mind. And here we’re trying to keep the mind still. So we have to first find a way of keeping the body still. So we sit in a position which we are comfortable with, a sort of comfort which you can maintain for maybe ten minutes.
So please sit in a comfortable position now. Okay. And sitting in the comfortable position. Close your eyes now. Now when your eyes are closed, you’ll find you can become more aware of your body.
And ask yourself whether the body is comfortable. I’m talking about the comfort which one can maintain without moving for around ten minutes. If the body needs adjusting, now’s a good time to adjust it at the beginning of the meditation. But keeping the eyes closed, you’ll find you will become more sensitive. And when the body is set up, then leave it alone and let it be.
There’s no need to move it anymore. We’re going to put our attention, instead of on the body, on the mind. And remind yourself that this is meditation time. It’s not a time for your business. And imagine yourself with two heavy suitcases, one in each arm.
The one in the left arm is filled with your past. Imagine yourself with that heavy suitcase which you’ve been carrying around for such a long time. Imagine yourself putting down that suitcase on the ground, though you have no past for the meditation time. And remind yourself not to pick this suitcase of the past up again until this meditation is finished. And then imagine in the other hand, in your right hand, you have another heavy suitcase filled with the future.
Your fears, expectations, anticipations, how heavy they may be. Put them down on the ground and feel the release of two heavy burdens. They will be there for you to pick up later. No one can take them away. But you’re leaving them down there to rest the mind which has been carrying them for so long.
When you’ve let go of the past and you’ve let go of the future, what are you left with? You’re left with this body and this mind inside. In the present moment, just now, how do you feel? As you’re looking at how you feel, can you see what I referred to earlier as the experience and the commentary? Just like a television set with true sources of information.
What’s actually happening now and what you say about it. Turn all of your attention to the experience and don’t listen to the commentary. Just to know the experience of now. Experience before words. Then experience one breath going in and one breath going out And then another breath going in and going out.
And then another. Watching this rhythm of breathing as if it was waves on the shore, not trying to control it, as if you’re standing back and just watching. Watching in the moment. Be careful of the commentary. Just put all the attention on the breath, the experience and know the experience of one breath as clearly as you can.
If you put your attention on it for a long time, you start to see things about the breath you would never imagine were there. The only thing you need to be concerned about is that breath happening right now. Right now. Right now if the commentary is still there. See if you can catch the experience just before the commentary starts.
Not trying to control or give any orders, But for once in your life, being a silent observer. Always beginning just by watching one breath. Just being with awareness. Not forcing the mind, not trying too hard, but letting your attention rest gently on the air which sustains your very life.