Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Stephen Batchelor uses a Pali Canon passage on “noble lineages” to challenge romanticized views of ancient Buddhist practice, arguing that early monks faced the same struggles with attachment and discontent that we do today. He introduces contentment not as resignation but as creative engagement with what we have, and explores meditation for life—a lifelong practice of developing what he calls the de-grasping effect, where sitting (even when sleepy or confused) creates space around habit patterns. He discusses four progressive levels of awareness: seeing patterns after the fact; recognizing them mid-action; spotting triggers before they activate; and finally, before the condition arises, gaining enough power to choose differently. Throughout, he emphasizes that meditation’s real gift is not exotic states but ordinary presence—acceptance of our daily life, openness in relationships, and the creative responsiveness that comes from dissolving the fixed patterns that limit us.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 IT.mp3
UUID: 4228552f-2fe7-4a2d-90a9-8f1eb12b43e0
Teacher: Batchelor
Collection: Insight Tapes (Batchelor)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~6,877
So this evening, first, I’d like to look at a passage again from the numerical discourses because I think it’s interesting in term of how we view a little the ancient times. I think we often look at the ancient times, the time of the Buddha, as a time where the people really meditated so well and they were so amazing. But what I found interesting when you read certain passage from the Pali Canon is that how astute the Buddha is and also how descriptive he is, How you really see what goes on. And he kind of, in a way, kind of show it to you. And what he described seems to me very much what I see today.
But in a way, it’s the same thing. They were not great heroes in those days. I think they were just like you and me, just trying to see, trying to meditate, and also having, you know, some obstruction. So this Sutta is called noble lineages. And it’s basically the Buddha telling us what are the criteria for belonging to a noble lineage.
And I would presume that as soon as I mentioned noble lineage, you think of something very exalted. You know, they must have attained all the jhanas or all the wisdom and all the compassion. But that is not what the Buddha says. And that’s what it starts with. There are amongst these four noble lineages, pristine of long standing, traditional, ancient, unadulterated, and never before adulterated.
And what are these four? So I mean, you really can read. It’s a good start. And you really think you’re going to get something quite amazing. And here is what he says.
And I really have to read the whole passage for you to really, you know, see. I mean, that’s what I love about this passage. Here, monks, a monk is content with any kind of robe. And he speaks in praise of contentment with any kind of robe. He does not engage in a wrong search, in what is improper for the sake of a robe.
If he does not get a robe, he is not agitated. But if he gets one, he uses it without being tied to it, and infatuated with it, not blindly absorbed in it, seeing the danger in it, understanding the escape. Yet because of this, he does not extol himself or disparage others. Any monk who is skilled in this, energetic, clearly comprehending, and mindful, he is said to be standing in an ancient pristine noble lineage. So as you read this, you can, in a way, kind of thought, so some of these monks were really keen on special robes.
You know? And you can really, in a way, see all what it seems a monk got up to with in connection with robes. And then he goes on about the next one is if a monk is content with any kind of alms food, any food they’re given. And again, it goes into the same thing, you know, not over infatuated or whatever it is. And the same thing with any kind of lodging.
So in a way, basically, the Buddha is saying to be in a noble lineage is to be contented. Contented with the clothes we wear, contented with the food we eat, contented with the house we have. And at one level, I think often nowadays in our society, I think contentment has a very bad press. If somebody says they’re contented, some people think, but what’s the matter with you? You must strive.
You must get more. Often, in a way, this is the way this economic system is. We’re always told we must consume for the economic thing to be better. If we don’t consume, we’re bad citizen. And in a way, basically, it’s nearly saying if we’re contented, you know, there is a problem with us.
But I think actually, personally, I would say a lot for contentment. And I think that’s why the Buddha often is pointing out too. Can you be content? What would it mean to be content? And I think, in a way, contentment is not a resignation.
To me, again, contentment is this creative engagement with the resources that we have, the resources that support us. And to see how so easily we can be discontented, either with ourselves, either with others, either with our situation. I am not saying that we should not change things when they are difficult, but to see how this tendency toward discontentment actually brings a lot of suffering in our life. And I think that’s why the Buddha sees this as really so important for his monks, that they be contented with their robe, with their food, with their lodging. And, you know, in kind of looking at how we get entangled when we are discontented or when we feel superior.
Because I think that’s also what he’s pointing out, is conceit. How if we get something, somebody doesn’t have, then how you feel superior. And it’s that way, I mean, the economics in France just before the World Cup was fantastic. You know, all the I was watching the news, and it was so funny. All these shop saying all these men from one family coming to buy a bigger TV, a bigger screen, bigger than the uncle, bigger than the brother, bigger I mean, was interesting.
There was this kind of race for kind of, you know, who has a bigger thing. Again, back to this identification between what we have and what we are. And I think that’s what the Buddha is pointing out, that whatever we have, especially if it’s good, that we don’t have, as he says, that we don’t feel kind of we extol oneself and disparage others because of what we have. But actually, we have a different relationship with the people we encounter. So that was just as a little sideline to kind of showing how the monks were at the time of the Buddha.
And I don’t think they are so very different from us nowadays with their preoccupation. And what also I wanted to talk about in a way is because I think it is a theme for most people and also as we are on the fourth day of this retreat to look at, in a way, meditation for life, to to see what is the connection between the meditation we do here, which in a way seems a little separate from our daily life. What is the connection? How can we look at this meditation for life? And I think first in that aspect, I would see meditation for life as meditation for all our life.
That actually the meditation is not an exotic special activity that in a way we do just to get a specific result. And then once we got that, then we can move on. We can do something more interesting like, I don’t know, golf or basketball, you know, next activity which is special. I think it is in a way important that often when we meditate, we looking. I think we measuring.
And we again have this ideal ideal of meditation. So we can waiting for meditative state or mystical experience. What I would say is the most important effect of the meditation, I would call it the de grasping effect. What I would call the effect. And I think it’s very important to see that.
To see that often we sit in meditation and we are unhappy because we’re frustrated, because we feel that we are having bad meditation, confused meditation, sleepy meditation. When actually personally, of course, it’s always more agreeable to have a very focused, clear meditation. I would not say the contrary. But at the same time to see that as we sit here, even if we’re sleepy, even if we’re confused, confused, because we come back time to time to the focus. Actually, something happened.
Just the stopping, the focusing, the looking deeply at the end of the sitting, we feel different. We feel there seems to be this, what I would call this e grasping effect. I think the meditation is very much about that. And when we do walking meditation again, it feels different. Like, notice when you do walking meditation here and remember when you kind of walk to the shop.
Generally, when you walk to the shop, either you’re totally somewhere else or either you’re already ahead of yourself. And generally, that activity not make you feel generally any better. But notice when you walk in meditation, just not going anywhere, just focusing for the sake of meditating, actually you feel a different, a little different again. Even in the movement, even in meditation, in movement too, there is I feel that this grasping effect. So to be careful when in a way we judge the meditation, I think we are actually judging it against kind of misguided criteria to look more at this degrasping effect than actually at exactly the way the meditation is when we do it.
So in a way to see that the meditation is a lifelong journey with many different aspect, I would say of learning, of opening, of letting go. And to see for that reason, actually, in a way, to me, the intention is to do it for the whole of our life, not just a little bit. Because in a way, as we continue with the practice, in a way, there is often hidden corners, places which in a way we we we kind of still a little blind. So in a way we need to continue to meditate to these blind corners, become a little clearer, a little brighter. And I remember recently, I met this friend and I asked her, you know, how was it going?
And she said, ah, meditation. I don’t believe in it anymore. I still do it because, you know, I’m used to. You know, it’s like, you know, you do basketball and you continue to do basketball. So I do meditation, But I don’t believe in it.
And I thought, this is a bit strange. So I said, but what happened? Because before she was really keen. I mean, she’d been doing it, you know, for a good fifteen, twenty years. I said, what happened?
She said, well, I went to India, I went to study with my great teacher and I love that teacher and I really respected that teacher and he’s such a great enlightened teacher. And then I had a big trouble when I was there. And so I went to tell him all my suffering and all my trouble and he said, just that, let it go. And it really was not helpful and it was so uncompassionate. And if he’s not compassionate, then he’s not awakened, then meditation doesn’t work.
I I kind of like that was a kind of a jump. Kind of it was interesting. When personally, I would have thought more that the teacher might not have been very good with people skills. You know, maybe he should get some training in counseling or something. And so in a way to see, often we have this kind of, you know, this idea.
It must be this way. It must be that way. When personally, I think it is in a way always a development. It is always in a way potential and development on the path of meditation. And that’s why in a way, to me what is interesting for me is that my teacher, master Kusan, in Korea was reputed to have three awakenings.
And you might say, you know, one should be enough, you know. Three, you know, it’s a it’s a lot. But actually because there is very much this fuel that you have, you know, a sudden insight and that will be followed by a gradual practice. And then again, you can have a sudden insight. So in a way, you have insight, you have awakening, but that has to become more organic, more into our daily life.
And so you cannot, know, just there is this continuation of the development of the practice. And I traveled with him. My teacher, master Kusan, several times, and he would meditate anywhere in the bus, in the train, anywhere we were, he meditated. And once we were in Switzerland, and it was at the time of the World Cup, and he liked football. So the first match, he came to see it, you know, and he was very excited and really enjoyed seeing it.
And then the next day, said, oh, do you want to watch it again? Said, no. No. No. No.
I must meditate. And I know why I thought I was so sweet that, you know, even he thought, you know, you know, seeing one match, yes. But second one, you know, I must meditate. Meditation is more important. So in a way to see there is always possibility where they’re not a stopping point.
We can continue to learn on the path of meditation. And I would say also, with meditation for life, to recognize and to appreciate life. To me, is very much part of this to see life in this moment and also to be more in life in this moment. Because I think often, actually, we are ahead of our life. Often, either we are in the past or often we are in the future.
We kind of ahead of our life. Hence, a lot of the time, we’re not really here. Be really present to our potential. In a way, opening to our potential because either we move ahead or we are in the past. And also sometimes, I feel that we take our life for granted.
That in a way, we think it’s in a way our right to be alive. And since this is our right to be alive, then what else should I do? You know, this is it. And we kind of, in a way, make it in something very ordinary, but in a kind of a kind of a very taken for granted, very blase way. And to me, that’s why, you know, somebody was asking about meditation in daily life.
And my question is, I mean, I know not everybody will meditate as a TV at home, but notice when you watch TV, actually, you are in the same posture as when you meditate most of the time, you know? So you watch TV, you know? And when we sit, we do a bit the same, but the posture is a little better. And in a way, why is it so easy easy to watch television? And why is it so difficult to sit in meditation when it’s a very similar type of activity, you could say, you know, physically?
And in a way, to look at that, I feel. To kind of how sometime we we let the time pass. We can really kind of, you know, let kind of think it doesn’t matter. And to me, this is very much what I learned from my teacher, master Kusan. This was one of his main main thing that, you know, meditation was an urgent thing to do.
He used to tell us it is as essentially, to do it as, you know, if you had a fire on your head, you will not think, should I meditate or not? You know, should I take this fire off my head or not? You would just get rid of it because it’s hot and you and he said, the same way, in a way, we should try to meditate with that same sense of urgency, wanting really to develop our potential. And also to be in our life in the face of death. Because I remember one time, we were walking, he was quite ill, and we were walking together.
And at some point, he stopped, and he turned to me and he said, you know, we never know how we’re going to be when we die. At the moment of death, we don’t know how we’re going to be. I don’t know how am I going to be. And this is why it’s so important to meditate. So I am prepared.
I am ready. I can be with it in a creative, engaged way. And to me, was a very moving moment that she, with that three awakenings, would say, I even I don’t know how I’m going to be. So that is why I think it is important to meditate, to be present to each moment of life so that I can also be present to my death. But often I feel that in a way we have this frustration, we have this desire to be somewhere somewhere else, to be someone else.
Often in a way, there is a lot of what I would call the comparing mind. If only I could sit like this person. If only I could have that like that person. If only I could have a different mind, a different body, a different life. But actually, I think that meditation, as a root of meditation, there is acceptance.
And to me, this is one of the gift of meditation to see there is nowhere else to go. There is no one else to be. But in that coming together with our being, our life, then we can open in that acceptance to our life in this moment. And I remember before my grandmother died, I used to play dominoes with her in the afternoon. And so this was in the autumn, and I was playing domino.
And in the autumn, leaves used to fall on the patio. And grandma hated leaves on the patio. This was really a no no. I mean, she really was very upset, disturbed by leaves, autumn leaves. So we were playing, and then she would get the look.
And then she would try to get up to sweep them, but she could not because she was not so physically able. So I got up, swept the leaf, put it in the dustbin, back to the domino. But fifteen minutes later, there was four leaves. Alright. Get up, sweep the four leaves, back to the domino.
Another ten minutes, three leaves. So I get up, and as I am, you know, going to sweep these three leaves, I can see in a way that slide, you could say kind of, you know, this contentment in a way. You know, this is not very heroic, you know, playing domino and kind of sweeping leaves every two minutes. And then, suddenly, this experience of realizing that at this moment, there was nothing else to do but play domino and sweep leaves. That’s all my duty, my responsibility in that moment.
I did not have to do anything else but that. And in that moment, there was this amazing amazing feeling of ease, of ease with the moment. And that’s why I realized in a way that part of the meditation process is at ease with actually the ordinariness of our daily life. Because I feel often we have this frustration because of this heroic notion. I must do something special.
I must find a special vocation. I must do something heroic. And I know this feeling very well. When I’m from the age of eleven, I wanted to save the world. I wanted to be the president of the republic.
Then I downgraded to being, you know, a deputy in the chamber. Then I downgraded to journalist. And then I stopped kind of having these ideas. And I just became an ordinary person. And to me, this was very interesting, stopping being a nun.
Because when I was a nun, I was extremely special. I was only French nun in the whole of Korea. I mean, you know, amongst sixty million people, this is fairly special. And I was also the only French Buddhist nun, Korean nun in the whole of France. Another sixty million people.
So I mean, you feel pretty special. And then I became I stopped being a nun and I became an ordinary person. And it was really interesting to watch that because I could feel at the beginning this sensation, why is nobody looking at me? You know? And to realize I was not special anymore.
I did not have a weird hairdo. I did not have weird clothes. I was just looking like everybody else. And then nobody looked at me. It was so interesting, that feeling of not being special.
And I think in that moment with my grandmother, I actually experienced the beauty. Kind of in a way, finally letting go of that final dot of specialness and just seeing the beauty of being ordinary. And to me, this is in a way one of the gift of meditation. To in a way become ordinary, you know, meditative, in an ethical way. Then also, in term of meditation for life, I think there is faith in our potential in this life.
So that in a way, we are not doomed, we are not stuck, but actually we can cultivate, we can train, we can experiment. And so in a way, we can work with this potential we have. And so I would say that meditation, as I said about the four effort, is very much cultivating of the positive. We are cultivating calm. And in a way, calm is not I think we have to be careful when we think of calmness.
Because I hear a lot of people talking about wanting to be calm, wanting to calm their mind, wanting to calm their feeling. But to me, actually, doesn’t mean that I am still unmoving, nearly rigid like. But to me, calm is a fact that actually we create space around everything in our experience. I think that’s what the calm we develop in meditation is about. Can we uncover this spaciousness around the thought, around the feeling, around the body, around the outer condition.
It doesn’t mean that everything freezes, but that there is actually life as space around it to express itself. Also, this openness. To me, this is an important aspect of the meditation. The fact that we develop over time more openness, more creative engagement with the self, with others, with the world. And that’s why think we have to be careful on not using the meditation as an anesthetic, as a way to remove ourselves from life.
Of course, when we are on a retreat, in a way we retreat, but I think to better go back, to be more open when we go back. And I can remember when I was a nun in Korea, we had this German monk come, and he came from Thailand. And in Thailand, he had a wonderful time. He would go with himself and a dog to an island, and he would practice very hard. And he had amazing meditative and mystical states.
He was fantastic. As soon as he came back to the monastery, he had problem. He was actually very argumentative. And so he would get into problem with people. Then it would be too troublesome.
He would go back to the island. Fantastic. Calm and focused and wonderful. Back to the monastery, back to the problem. So finally, he kind of saw there was a little difficulty here.
Know? So this calm did not seem to kind of move into his daily life. He seemed to stay with the dog in the island. And so he decided to come to Korea so that he would have because Korea is very communal. You kind of you do everything together.
You sit together. You eat together. You do everything. You work together. It’s extremely communal.
So he thought, you know, if he came into Korea, he would kind of finally manage the gap between that calm by himself and trouble with people. And I must say, I mean, he gave me lots of trouble in terms of translation because often he would get into argument and I have to kind of kind of restore peace. But I found I found this was interesting. You see, we have to to be careful. Interesting.
You see, have to to be careful the meditation is not just about the calm. It’s also about the openness, the creative response to the world. How do I relate to others? And also within that, I think there is a certain brightness. And that’s what I talk so much about creativity.
For me, I would say meditation in a way removes obstacle to our creativity. Our creativity in relationship to ourselves, to others, to the world, to our work, whatever it is. A certain kind of bright responsiveness so that we kind of, in a way, encounter the world in a very different way. And I think that’s what at that level, it’s interesting to look at the meditation and to see a little how it works. To see that what we’re doing in meditation, when we try to focus, is not so much that we’re trying to be calm by focusing, by concentrating.
But I think what is important to see is what happen when we focus. What happen when we focus is that actually we don’t continue with our patterns. To me this is in a way the main point of the meditation. That it dissolves the pattern, the habits that in a way fix and limit us. And the first way it works is and that’s why we come back.
That’s what we tell you. So in a way, the fact that you stay on the breath is not the most important. What is the most important is that you come back to the breath or come back to the sound or to the body or whatever it is. Because when you come back, you don’t feel the mental habit or the emotional habit. And you don’t give it power.
And that’s why we create space. Because we don’t get so lost in our mental, emotional or physical habit because we come back again and again to the anchor, to the breath, but also to the moment in which we are more multidimensional. We are not just our habits. And that’s why I think meditation is effective because we can experience that spaciousness. And that’s why in the way at the beginning, when we start meditating, we seem to have so many thoughts.
And in a way, we have the feeling after a while that we have less thought. But I think what we it’s more that we feed less the thought. We give less power to the thought. So then, they can have more of what I would call their function. I think that’s why the meditation helps us to come back to creative functioning instead of getting lost in the patterns, in the habits.
So I think it’s important we’re not trying to stop the thought or the emotion. We’re trying to, you know, help them to come back to the creative functioning. For example, one of the thing we might do easily in meditation, It’s daydreaming. We easily daydream. This is one of our favorite activity.
We sit in meditation. If I was, if I had, and you’re going to this wonderful film where you are, you know, the actors, the screenwriters, the editor, the producer, you can sell the peanuts. You know? So it’s wonderful because it’s a mono reality and so it’s very agreeable. Everything goes according to plan.
Then when we come back to daily life, then we get a bit frustrated. It’s not so according to plan. But in a way, the daydreaming comes out of the function of imagining, which I think is a very beautiful function we have, very creative function. In the same way, we might have a tendency to be angry like myself. I have a tendency to be irritable.
But actually, this comes from having energy. I feel when one is angry, generally, one has a certain type of energy. And in a way to in a way kind of dissolve the patterns of what I would call the disturbing emotion of the anger and bring it back to the function, which is to have energy, to have a certain type of energy. And so in a way, to see that the meditation is not so much to get rid of something, as I said before, but to kind of in a way dissolve the exaggeration, the proliferation, the kind of the habitual, the pattern which kind of seems to fix ourselves. And so if we dissolve the pattern, we can come back to a much more creative potential functioning.
And in the same way, with what is it so important to look deeply, to cultivate this experiential investigation, is because in a way that’s what give energy to the practice. The focusing, the concentration is not enough. We have that ability to be bright, to be vivid, to be clear. And that’s what the meditation does with this kind of the various way we do it. To look deeply or to question or whatever way it is.
Because that’s what it gives us is choices. That inquiry, experiential investigation make us see that things are not fixed. Things are not solid. Things are much more moving, changing, fluid than we think they are. And that helped us to see that we have choices, that there is more movement.
There is more kind of facets. There is more aspect. We are kind of in a way multi perspective of instead of just being one block of something. And I feel that in a way the concentration and the inquiry together actually helps us to develop a creative awareness. And a creative awareness that then we can take in everything we do when we work to bring creative awareness to that.
So in a way, when you work here, to notice, can you do it with creative awareness? Or are you caught up in patterns? Patterns of doing it in a certain tight way or in a certain kind of being ahead of yourself already finished before you finish. And to me, it’s very interesting to bring creative awareness to how do I work? Do I work in a distracted manner?
Do I work in this kind of goal oriented manner? Do I work in a kind of a tense manner? Or do I work in a way which is stable and open? Kind of really engage with what I do, but in this kind of with a certain ease in it. And the same thing, you know, to bring creative awareness to relationship, to everything that we do to look.
How do I relate to people? Do I relate in such a way that I really accept them? I’m really, in a way, there for them in a creative way? Or do I really just see them through the need I have of them? Or really through kind of in a way a very self centered position.
Recently, I was leading a day in London. I don’t know, maybe some of you were there. It was a wonderful moment because we are talking about creative awareness and relationship and things like that. And then there was this man, wonderful person I see regularly there, and he said, you know, I am asked three questions by women when he’s in a relationship with them. Do you love me?
Do you still love me? Do will you always love me? And in a way, my first response was, why do they have to ask these questions to you? Because obviously, you behave in a certain way, then they were kept needing to have reassurance. You know?
So in a way to see when we are in a relationship, can it be in a way a kind of a a partnership or really something that we share together? Or is it a kind of self centered relationship that we only see our need? And we only see the the other through our needs, which I think would make for a very, you know, a limited fixed relationship. So to try to see, to play during this week with this creative awareness that you’re developing, even if you seem to think your meditation is working, is not working, I’m fairly sure personally that you are developing creative awareness. But I think when we meditate, that’s what we develop.
That’s what happens. And I would like to finish. Yes, so maybe I have to mention this because in a way, to be careful in terms of the creative awareness, to see that when we meditate also we develop the power of creative awareness. So that actually, creative awareness kind of has a different, what I would call, different level of operation. But first, we see it at the end.
Like we go through the pattern, we go through the pain and suffering, and at the end we see, ah, I did it again. I got caught again. And I think, you know, if we start to meditate a little very quickly, we can see that, ah, here I go. Got in the same loop. And then comes the next movement which is generally a little more painful, which is you are in the middle of it.
You are in the middle of the pattern. You are angry. You are upset. You are whatever it is you can get worked up with and you see yourself doing it. You really see yourself in it.
But because the power is not strong enough, you can’t do anything about it. And often we at that point, we feel very frustrated because we see it and we can’t do anything about it. But the fact that we see it generally diminish its length. It doesn’t last as long as generally as it does. Then we start the third movement to see ourselves in a way at the beginning.
We see, we start to now know ourselves more with creative awareness and we see the trigger. We see what is it that will make us go through the loop. And then we have that creative movement of, in a way, kind of helping ourselves to think about something else. To kind of diminish its power, its intensity. So that if we have a kind of a certain words trigger certain thing, then we might, you know, go for a walk, go to talk to somebody, read a book, or do some kind of a diverting activity.
So we’re not caught in the loop. So already, we have in a way kind of more power because we’ve seen the trigger and we kind of start to de trigger, disempower the trigger. And then the fourth movement is when we see ourselves before we’re going to do it. Like we, in a way, see the condition that give rise to the pattern, and then we see ourselves moving into the negative patterns. And then at that moment, the power of the awareness is greater than the habit.
And at that moment, finally you say to yourself, maybe for once, I can do something else. And what is interesting is that that moment, there is an amazing fear. How can I do something else? I have not done anything else for the last I have done the same thing for the last twenty, thirty, forty years. And in a way, this is why we don’t let go of our painful painful habits.
We prefer the known suffering than the unknown, known suffering. But if you have the power of the creative awareness, you you have the courage to go beyond that fear. And you say, okay, let’s do something else for once. And you do it and it feels so doable, so easy. And you wonder, why didn’t I do it before?
And in a way, you cannot do it ever again because now, in a way, the spell is broken. The spell, you’re not caught in that spell of the habit. You have seen through it in a way you have totally dissolved its power. And also you see the suffering it caused to yourself and others. So out of compassion, you cannot even reactivate the patterns.
It is gone. And I think in a way, that’s why in some way the Buddha talks of cessation. And I think, yes, at time. We can The habit can totally go. We can totally in a way dissolve the power of it.
But of course, there are some habits who are very deep. So actually what we can do is actually diminish the power of it, diminish the length of it. So instead of being resentful for a week, you might just be resentful for a minute and then it’s gone. Forcing to see, to see that, I think is very important. So our time is up.
So I’m gonna stop here. Are there any You see, this is actually kind of a subtle a subtle question because at one level, yes. You know, the the instruction is if there is a thought, come back to the breath. So this is definitely the instruction. But we have to be careful to not take the instruction totally literally in the fact that you don’t want to have any thought in the mind, but more to accept that the brain will produce thought.
And that’s just, you know, in the same way that we cannot stop hearing, we cannot stop thinking. And yes, it is also true that I would say if you were to go on a retreat for a month in silence, at some point, maybe for, you know, one sitting, you would have the experience of having no thought. But having no thought will not mean that you are not conscious. But having no thought means that because for a month you’ve been in silence, nothing is going on. And actually, yes, finally, you know, there is not much to arise anyway.
And then you’re so calm and focused and inquiring that, yes, nothing arise. But you’re still conscious. It’s not that the consciousness has switched off. So I think, you know, I would say, yes, it is possible to have much less thought or no thought in very specific circumstances. But I would say in term of a week retreat, I would say even in a week retreat, at times, you can experience what I would call a quiet and clear state for a few seconds, a few minutes or longer, where actually you have very little thought.
And there is just what I would call consciousness. But a lot of the time but actually, to experience that require a lot of energy. So we cannot maintain it. I think that’s why we have to be careful to think that we must always be in a quiet and clear state. I think this requires too much energy actually and also goes against a little, as Steven was saying, against the brain who kind of produces the stuff.
And so the thing is to to me what is important in the meditation is to see that we have the thought. Because I think this is very important to become more conscious of what we think. But generally, as soon as we see the thought, generally it goes, and we come back to the breath. Then another thought arise, and according interesting, catchy, whatever it is, or how we feel at that moment, a little tired or really bright, we might see it very quickly. Oh, yes.
Planning or whatever it is. And you see it and then you come back. But you come the coming back is not judging the thought. I should not have that thought. That thought is a very natural thought to her.
But in a way, your intention in this moment is to be more conscious of the breath than in a way going on with the thought. So that’s what I would say about that one. But that it’s a fine line, you know. And so personally, I would make a gradation that we have different type of thought. What I would call light occupying thought, which are just kind of, you know, little thing popping up.
Very light. Planning light. Just come up, down. Come up, down. And so sometimes we have that feeling that we watch the breath and at the same time we have this kind of little light thought passing by.
And that, you know, very easily they will let go. You kind of and you come back. You come back. Then you will have what I will call the pattern, mental pattern. When you kind of tendency you have to think a certain way.
Planning, judging, ruminating, daydreaming, fabricating, whatever it is. Everybody has different kind of groove.