Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Choedak teaches the practical foundations of calm abiding meditation through two interlocking themes: the symbolic meaning of physical posture and mindfulness of feeling. He begins by stressing that sitting posture is not mere form but an expression of intention, harmonizing the body’s four elements and preparing the ground for focused practice. He then transitions to mindfulness of breathing and feeling, guiding students to correspond the three phases of breath—inhalation, retention, exhalation—with the three feelings: pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant. Throughout, he emphasizes that each breath offers an opportunity to deliberately cultivate positive feelings and release negative emotions. Choedak illustrates how this practice scales across daily life: with roughly 21,600 breaths per day, meditators gain thousands of chances to strengthen mental clarity and emotional resilience both in formal meditation and during ordinary activity. His final teaching addresses a common misconception: meditation is not about achieving a blank mind but learning to recognize, manage, and work skillfully with thoughts. This instruction suits practitioners new to calm abiding practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 TtT.mp3
UUID: 9767e320-2dd3-43f9-88b2-73d9c65a68d1
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Calm Abiding (Choedak)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~6,618
You have to familiarize with the physical posture and symbolism of it. And then once it is the bodily posture is breaching to some kind of con I will say, content content contented posture. Then you slowly move on the rounds of breath. And then after a couple of rounds of breath, you also return to check your physical posture again. So therefore, you’re completely containable by yourself within your own body, and nothing really discursive, external there out there really really checks you away.
When you’re able to achieve that, you have built the the most important, you know, I would say, foundation for the meditation to grow, that is to contain your own senses. So that the the the the nothing is went made made to fall into into, you know, fall into traps. But one is able to prevent them from going wild or becoming discursive, but being able to give them meanings what the posture are each doing, and therefore mobilize the four elements that may not be completely in harmony because of that. Mind is not happy, body is not listening. That’s because all the four harmony four elements are not in great harmony.
Now if you can correspond the meaning of the posture with the four elements that that I have spoken today, then that will slowly sort of build the foundation for the calm abiding meditation to develop not only as a sessional prerequisites, but also as as a preparation for the for the man for the actual meditation to make natural progression there. So I think I haven’t made much preparation for watching the time. But so we’ll conclude here at this stage for a short break. The teachings on the calm abiding began with the topic of the how to find the six most important prerequisites in learning and adopting the practice of meditation. So, have discussed the prerequisites at some length and particularly the significance of the physical posture and meaning which one should attach with the posture, and how that whole physical posture of oneself in the beginning of each session deserves a good length of time to spend time, that every single posture in which you sit is an expression of a yearning, expression of the yearning that you have to cultivate the qualities that that that the one is one should one should reap the qualities and benefits from practicing meditation.
We also particularly had occasion to talk about the importance of harmonizing not only outer elements, but also all inner elements by harmoniously synchronizing one’s whole bodily energy and the posture therefore is not a mere pretence as one is in meditation. But it is it is subtly making fundamental changes in the workings of inner elements in the body by way you pose your physical posture. The gaze of your eyes, the way you are able to place your hands and legs and completely sort of root your whole body on the ground. So we have occasion to discuss on those topics yesterday at some length. And also we have had opportunity to do number of sessions of calm abiding, particularly using the body as the focus of your meditation.
We also had occasion to incorporate the practice of bodily mindfulness, not only in the sitting, but also in the walking meditation and everything else we do outside meditation. We have encouraged everyone to incorporate their all activities as a mindful and paid full attention that they all deserve. That they’re not sort of habituated pattern repeating on its own, but they are intended actions for meaningful purposes. And this is particularly meaningful in the context of the retreat where we try to enhance our sense of concentration to everything we do. So hopefully this has given us some kind of greater intimate understanding of bodily mindfulness.
The purpose of sitting meditation and bodily mindfulness is not only to stay as put at one place, but at the same time, wherever we take this body, that is to say wherever we are, how can we ensure that we are completely aware of all the outputting of the physical body? And, unless one is mindful of what one is doing, we may not know what is a beneficial thing to do, either for oneself or for the other. And, we may not know what is the harmful that we should avoid, both for oneself and for the other. So, our physical energy may be wasted for no gainful purposes if one is not mindful. Every day we get exhausted whether we did something wonderful or not.
So that shows that we are there’s always energies always spent for gainful or no gainful purposes. So, it’s very very crucial to know that we are doing things that are beneficial. If not, we’d rather not do. We don’t have to do for the sake of doing, we have to do for the sake of the purpose. And therefore, we’re not habituated anymore.
We’re not doing out of our course of habitual pattern that that has long been there and we haven’t been able to reinvent or modify. Meditation is a revolutionary practice of modifying oneself and ones perception of the universe. Because unless one modify one’s own perception and one’s own behaviors, the universe doesn’t change or improve. So, physical body is the first physical body is most tangible sign of one’s having relationship with the world. So, if we are able to do anything with the body and more intellect more intelligently than before, then we have definitely gained great benefit from learning to sit in meditation.
Whether you sit half an hour well or whether you sit two hour well, it really doesn’t matter as long as this kind of mindfulness is implied. Mindfulness awareness, everything we do is quite impacting on what you do. Almost every stretch of arms or every movement of your feet, where you’re going, where are you, why you are there, what are about to do, what is I’m I’m doing about to do, this for what purpose, unless there is this quest. The quest is not only spiritual activities. The quest is always there must be a mind seeking always.
What is the purpose? What is the reason why I’m doing this? This is highly encouraged teachings of the Buddha. That you never should you should never even take highly sounding philosophical ideas without analyzing. Let alone, you know He doesn’t say just analyze philosophical ideas and not analyze your own activities.
Why, if I analyze philosophical ideas, it doesn’t enhance us to analyze our own activities. So if it doesn’t help us to have greater clarity and awareness in our own activities, why bother someone’s ideas? So the whole idea of of teachings and using teaching as simply a mirror and we are the picture that will reflect in the mirror. Depending how we make our face. How we make our face, that face will reflect in the mirror.
So, the teaching reveals, teaching reveals. So, the bodily mindfulness is is is not so much only to sit and adopt in attitude or posture of Buddha while you’re sitting, but at the same time because you know, Buddha sat once for six years, but after that, I don’t think he sat very long. Because he was constantly going, teaching, counseling, meeting people, you know, discussing all affairs of people. So, you see, you can see that the amount of time we also sit maybe shorter than what the rest of the time our body does. But the rest of the time what the body does is influenced by the time that you spend sitting, then of course the mindfulness that we need to have in the body.
One of the teachings is, for instance, not to harm any other living beings, for instance. Usually, harming other living beings is considered physically not injuring any other living beings. That’s one of the very crucial teachings of the Buddha is not to harm any other living beings. Now, you cannot just subscribe to a high sounding moral precepts, at the same time lacking bodily mindfulness. If you don’t have bodily mindfulness, however much you have embraced the whole idea of non violence, you don’t know how to control your physical energy.
And it usually does the very wrong that you don’t want to do. So, mindfulness is the best of all precepts, really. If the bodily mindfulness isn’t there, no matter what amount of degree or quantity of precepts we take, they’re just for the sake of the number, really. So, if one lacks mindfulness, then therefore all precepts are superficial. If one is mindful, this time that you sit spend in sitting, bodily mindfulness, has enabled you kind of new it’s almost like your whole body has been overhauled in the meditation.
When you rise up from the meditation, you’re much more aware of what you might do. And you conserve a lot of energy because you won’t be doing things that are unprofitable. And therefore you will be conserving a lot of energy that we normally spend for no gainful purposes. So, one who’s conserving of his or her energy more skillfully, get tired lesser. You know, they get exhaust they don’t get exhausted.
They don’t get fatigued doing nothing. For instance, most days, even if people don’t do anything, at the end of the day they are exhausted. So, it is important to sparingly direct our energy in very, very profitable purposes. So, that is the practice of mindfulness. Bodily mindfulness.
If you’re able to sit well, so what? You know? If the mindfulness doesn’t doesn’t make you to sit well in any situation. You know, that means how do you sit well? Meaning, people say sit well means how does your mind take it?
That’s what really is sitting well. Even you’re physically sitting, but mind might not be sitting well. Physically everybody’s sitting supposedly in this hall, but the mind is running all over the place, the mind is not really sitting well. The whole idea is to act conditioning. We are trying to recondition the mind so much so that by sitting in this manner, feeling comfortable and very relaxed and appropriate in this posture, as you sit and use the technique of concentration.
You develop mindfulness of of discovering your body wherever it is as a convenient as the as as what you call as the proper place to be. Really of the happiness guaranteeing state of mind. Because wherever you are, do not feel misplaced. That’s a powerful thing to have. You’re almost happy where you are.
If one is doing something bodily mindful, the mind will accept where the body is, what it is doing. Now, if you discover the body is about to do or doing something that you don’t like it to be doing, of course, you won’t sit well, you won’t feel comfortable. Now, that’s the body aspect of it. It’s harder harder to just talk about body out of context, of the four mindfulnesses. Now, this morning I suggested to do particularly the meditation on the breathing.
And that’s why I will talk this morning on the second mindfulness, mindfulness of feeling. Traditionally it’s called mindfulness of feeling, but of course some have paraphrased it as mindfulness of breathing. Of course it’s very difficult to have the mindfulness of feeling. Because feeling I think we are all aware of certain feelings more aware of than others. There’s always one feeling at a time.
Let’s put it this way, in our mind. What’s on your mind, you know, that means really what are you feeling? Whether you’re having pleasant feelings or unpleasant feelings or neutral feelings, you know, that you couldn’t put up any tick but something there. You couldn’t say it’s good or bad, but it’s just there. It’s a bland feeling.
That’s a neutral feeling, you know. There’s always if you’re mindful and you watch your feelings, there’s always something of these three sorts. Either pleasant feeling, and pleasant feeling maybe you are happy. Unpleasant feeling maybe you’re a little, little, little say, what’s wrong with me? What I’m doing wrong?
Why did he do that? Why is things like this, you know? You know, one doesn’t really feel one doesn’t fit comfortable in this situation. Neutral feeling is there’s no extreme feelings, but it it is almost absence of extremities. Absence of extremities is a neutral feeling.
Now, so be able to the whole idea of mindfulness is to you know, before going to designate your feelings to label them as a pleasant feeling, unpleasant feeling. First you just go watch the rounds of breath. This is what I mean by that in relation to the correspondence between the three feelings and the three rounds, three segments of breath. The inhalation, retention and exhalation. Now, we correspond this with the three feelings.
As I suggested, let’s inhale, you try to breathe in everything that is positive and good of the whole thing that is outside you to come inside you through the oxygen that you’re breathing in, go into your nervous system. That’s trying to trying to trying to facilitate pleasant feeling. You’re trying to see whether can manufacture pleasant feeling that every time you inhale. You see? So, that is trying to increase your awareness to not only just sit there as if whatever feeling comes, you just take it type of thing.
Don’t become a bag. Become the contents of the bag. So so that you actually go to manufacture the feeling, pleasant feelings in relation to inhalation. So, we were talking that there are twenty one thousand six hundred rounds of breath that we all breathe every day. Many of them we do mindfully?
Third of that is all inhalations. A third of that is all exhalation. And a third of that is all retentions. So, you have virtually seven thousand two hundred, I think, is it? Yeah, seven thousand two hundred opportunities of pleasant feelings a day.
Seven thousand two hundred opportunities a day to develop pleasant feelings. Because every inhalation must be our vehicle to bring what is good to you. We don’t want to bring what is bad to us. We want to bring what is good to us. Okay, so that’s Now this is what I mean by three segment breathing process.
Why you segment the one round of breath into three segments? The first segment which is inhalation is associated with pleasant feelings. So pleasant feeling you can draw it from nature, people. It’s probably much better to draw from nature because we’re talking about the benefit of solitude and so forth that Śāntideva was alluding us yesterday. Is first one must be so appreciative and contented with the nature that surrounds you and being able to draw all the positive things with each inhalation through the mother nature with each inhalation.
Now, how many rounds of breath in one meditation of the seven thousand two hundred you can do? It’s dependent to how good a concentration you have. Isn’t it? That good a concentration you have. So, maybe say forty five minutes forty five minutes of calm abiding meditation gives us fifteen times of that opportunity.
Now, that is that is to say that every minute minute you have fifteen rounds of breath. Fifteen rounds fifteen rounds and of that if you just take take one third of that as a positive, you know, pleasant feelings. Then there’s a every minute there’s every minute there’s five pleasant feelings. Every minute you can cultivate five pleasant feelings. This is what we mean by corresponding the three feelings with the three segment of your breathing practice.
Now, inhalation is pleasant feelings, obviously. Obviously, you know. And and now for the for the for the unpleasant feelings unpleasant feelings. Let’s talk about, you know, neutral feelings. Now when you have when you have inhaled inhaled what is what is what you believe to be a pleasant breathing, pleasant feeling, then you try to immerse that with your whole nervous system.
What you have of yourself, what remains of your old past, old self is there to receive what is good of the feeling that you have just brought in. So you got to completely immerse, assimilate that with your whole nervous system as the the as your inhale breath goes into the lungs and then it goes and pumps to the various, you know, other nervous system and then it doesn’t become like oxygen. It quickly becomes goes to produce various constituents, regenerative fluid such as blood, such as whatever energy that we might be needing from the inhalation. Otherwise, we’re not just a pipe, are we? It’s coming from here, coming from there, it’s not like that.
So, there’s a function for what we breathe in, you know, biologically speaking. So, the time that it takes for it to assimilate is made to correspond with the neutral feeling. Neutral feeling means you’re trying to assimilate with the whole body to feel rejuvenated, for instance. So the effect of the pleasant feeling that you have just inhaled is positive, but it has to assimilate with the rest of the body. And then soon after, however, however pleasant effect of the inhalation might be with the retention, but it will soon be followed by the exhalation.
Now, wouldn’t be exhalation follows the retention. However, long the inherent retention is is usually followed by exhalation. It is exhalation that is made to correspond with unpleasant feelings. Now, unpleasant feeling is not sort of thing you bring towards you. Unpleasant is then something you get rid of.
So that’s the whole difference is that if you’re developing mindfulness of breathing or mindfulness of feeling at all, that you try to develop mindfulness that every inhalation correspond to a pleasant feeling that you acquire and that you you tap into from the tap into the universe and world. And the exhalation that you do is is very much very much releasing the releasing. It’s not giving negativities to anybody. Know, this is one shouldn’t confuse this with the Tonglen meditation. You know, this is completely separate from Tonglen meditation.
This is it. Tonglen is giving giving the good things to others, you know, and taking the sufferings of others. This is completely different. Yeah? So, let’s not confuse between the two.
You’re simply getting rid of your negative feelings, negative feelings with each exhalation. What is the function of exhalation? Most people might say, so that you can breathe in some more. But what’s the point of breathing in some more if the very if you didn’t exhale anything negativity? You have you just have inhale something positive, something pleasant.
So so if unless you have you have emptied all the negativity that was trapped in our body, in our emotion, in our nervous system, what room have you got to put anything? Most of us are full. Full cup you can’t fill. So first we have to empty what what is what what what it occupies before you can pour into anything. Isn’t it?
So why breathe in some more if if if we haven’t emptied, vacated the thing that completely bottled in us. So, exhalation is therefore an opportunity because we may have bottled certain emotions and feelings. Not only intellectually, may remember, even they may have become biochemically trapped forces. Toxic matters, toxic factors have become solidified. Stains become foreign products within our nervous system and organs.
They have been trapped in that way. So the more frequently you can psychosomaticly, I should say, if you exhale that you are releasing your anger, you’re releasing your resentment, guilt, and sadness, ungratitude, loneliness, whatever negativities that you the feelings that you have previously held so unskillfully, that now use each exhalation an opportunity to release those things. Seven thousand two hundred opportunities. How many, how how many negativities we can talk about? It wouldn’t be that many.
Seven thousand two hundred opportunity to release, you know. So exhalation is a very wonderful thing. I mean, these nostrils are very carefully designed for a purpose. Nostrils are not designed upward, you see, you know, not downward. All the all the sort of outlets are usually usually pointing downwards because these are the these are things that should prone down.
This is something that you should flush down, you know. So use the nostrils if you use the nostrils. Big nose ones, greater opportunities. Greater opportunities. So that’s so that’s so that you use each each exhalation without making it very noisy, you know, very very meaningful, very very in fully paid attention.
Fully paid attention exhalation is very powerful release, you know. You couldn’t really release. Now, in deep meditation, it’s a very very powerful healing. Meditation could be very is most effective, you know, healing. If one knows how to follow this kind of fundamental, but over powerful.
Very, very powerful because why does all the meditators glow with great happiness and bliss and joy and missing nothing, resorting to very little comfort. Yeah? Resorting little comfort little comfort of sensory pleasures, but sitting in a very, awkward, you know, posture for so long in a very, very rough area. And yet inside they glow because they’re they’re busy using each exhalation an opportunity to discharge the the good, the bad that they need to have, they shouldn’t keep anymore. You know?
So that’s why each this is mindfulness of breathing, mindfulness of feeling is a very very powerful, most fundamental of Buddhist meditation. It is probably emphasized quite a lot in all Buddhist meditation schools. Some don’t emphasize so much on the posture. Some, you know, some do, but some don’t. But, there will be very few who could not afford not to emphasize the mindfulness of breathing.
Anapanasati, it’s called. So, so, this is this is to say that each once your mind is sharply focused to watch each rounds of breath, you know, when you just do this is what we were saying yesterday, qualifying each breath with the thing that you’re doing. Now, when you’re when you when you know that each inhalation is wonderful opportunity. Now, this doesn’t have to be necessarily when you meditate. This could be down the hall, walking down the road, waiting for something, or doing something where you might be not doing something.
You just you just have the time. Some people bored not to not knowing what to do. I mean, this is wonderful thing to do. You just watch few rounds of breath and completely air your mind. Almost as if as if your mind has put in the nice washing machine.
And it come up clean, sparkling, fresh. And the first, of course, when the first, of course, when the washing machine, all the powder is thrown, and water is flowing, I think the dishes are very miserable. It really doesn’t like it. Know, throwing all these strange chemicals and their water coming shooting from every and then slowly the dishes realize, oh, is that this one you you wanna try to remove? Oh, yeah.
Okay. And then, realize, you know, slowly it adjusts. Slowly adjusts that that it is trying to do good to ourselves. And, of course, later on, you know, it comes very clean. Every process of purification must go through that.
So, in meditation, you might while you might think wish to bring all the pleasant feelings, but also pay just as good attention and energy in the in the exhalation of negativities. You may have a lot of anger towards somebody, resentment to somebody for no reason, you know. It’s so long. It’s not necessary to keep this long. I must do something.
It doesn’t have to be it doesn’t have to be a a great occasion. It could be any day. Any day is is worthwhile to be releasing those feelings. You know? So if one is doing this Anapanasati, the mindfulness breathing exercise very well.
Now this is this is sessionally speaking. Sessionally in your meditation you just as we were saying, first we were just just counting the rounds of breath. Rounds of breath is of course a little later stage than what I’m talking now. At the very beginning most people should really learn to qualify each of the rounds of breath. Once you become very good at that each inhalation is an opportunity to bring in positive feelings.
So you become really good at manufacturing pleasant feelings. You know? And then when you’re good at releasing negative feelings, you’re good at becoming releasing negative feelings. And almost that it is now habituating us to hold no negativity longer than one rounds of breath. If possible, you know.
If possible, that’ll be great, you know. The more frequently one is able to do, the the the the that much you become lighter of all the, you know, weight that seem to people carry unnecessarily, you know. Even physical weight people wanted to shake them off. But emotional weight loss programs, I don’t think there is one. And this may be one.
Yeah, at least I think so. Why it’s called intelligent emotions? You know? We are just not intelligent how to handle with certain emotions. If you can do the mindfulness practice very very well, this is designed by the fully enlightened.
This is not just one medical person specialist in one area. This is the fully enlightened one whose very basic meditation practice designed to do this, designed to do this. Now, one has to have a lot of faith in doing this practice that that each inhalation I must do assiduously to reimagine, to have visions of all wonderful things there to be tapped. And each inhalation is opportunity to to to bring in, to imbibe, to feel, to be part, to be connected to. They are not island of nobody nobody caring and cherishing you.
You just have to open your arms. You just have to breathe differently. And there, you get all the goodwill waiting outside the door. Otherwise, we’re putting a wall. We’re pushing things away as if our own neurosis push everything away.
We’re not pushing making bridges to meet them. Now, you don’t talk sweet things and to people individually to make bridges here. I’m not talking about that. This is much more mystical than this. You do with your breathing exercise meditation.
It slowly will engender nature. Your perception of people have changed already. Maybe you have maybe that the very negativities that was that was functioning as a wall has been tumbled down by the power of your deliberate exhalations, deliberate inhalations. This is why meditation could be comprehensively, you know, purificatory, you know. Very very purificatory practices if one is able to do.
Now, so now when your mind is very very focused on this, on when you’re able to watch the rounds of breath in meditation as we were suggesting with the with the previous session, then we we would we would like to dedicate more conscious effort. Yeah? More conscious effort to live that way in and out of meditation with that kind of conscious way to see. You never would find all of a sudden uninvited and unpleasant feeling in you all of a sudden. You can’t.
They can’t come in you all of a sudden because you wouldn’t let them stay so long. As soon as you discover them, you exhale them. And when you are inhaling, you would not deliberately bring any negative effect of thought. Anything that that is all of a sudden felt in you is probably previously unresolved feeling still lingering there. Now because you have been doing a lot of deliberate exercise of breathing, they are now scrapped off and so they are falling.
So they’re still left there, you know. So they just come peeling off so to speak. Because previously they were so sedimented, you wouldn’t know there is any. But now the effect of the practice. Sometimes there’s a gush of negative emotions you find yourself.
But all of a sudden, you realize, how come I didn’t generate anything? How come all of a sudden, they’re surging me? And then you’d use the exhalation again. And then much easier to release. And it becomes so it increases your sensitivity.
Sometimes this the the sensitivities comes comes so sharp you might not like it. But but that’s the only way to deal with it, you know. Because once you are able to do this, then the the the time that you spend in formal meditation and time you don’t spend is is is very different. So, you have very little time that you can spend in formal meditation. But, you realize that there are opportunity every time to be watching couple rounds of breath if, say, someone is becoming very tense at situations.
How do you stop that from worsening? If you stop, hold, pause, what they call, pause couple of more minutes, and just watch the rounds of breath a couple of times, and you will be able to re-sustain your sense of sanity. Now, this is what I mean by mindfulness of feeling because you not only become managing of your feelings at the in the meditation, but also outside meditation, you become more aware what are you doing to generate particular feelings. Are you are you are you manufacturing pleasant feelings or are you are you availing yourself to be a victim of a negative feeling that is circumstantially there? In a circumstantially, there may be a lot of negative emotion, negative possible negative feelings.
But whether we become influence those negative feelings around us is how how, you know, how we avail of ourselves. If we are back if we’re becoming a bag ourselves, yes, someone will put in us. They say, oh, here you go. You go there. From people’s negative influence, it’s very easy to affect those who are who are themselves unable to restrain themselves.
If one is being a cup or bag wherever, you know, easily an influence, of course, other people’s negativity influenced us, you know. We we didn’t do anything, but just because we got to know something or feel some know something, all of a sudden, we became part of that suffering, part of that negativity. And and you become even aware that it’s happening there and then. Yeah? It has it has increased your sensitivity to know the negative emotion there.
But you don’t go and brood it anymore. You will do straight away the breathing exercise so that it is released there and then. Then then. So that you could actually you can prevent from any negative emotions snowballing itself into bigger and bigger. You know, you can prevent it from becoming bigger and bigger.
Because, as you know, the whole idea of mindfulness of breathing is so that that your mind becomes more aware of itself. Now, right now, we we’re talking about only mindfulness feeling. When when mind is fullness of feeling. Because once you are sometimes there are feeling is a little more more grosser than thoughts. Yeah.
So first so therefore, it’s difficult to have the third mindfulness. Mindfulness is a thought unless you’re really sensitive with the particular feelings that you yourself can put as labels. So this is pleasant feeling I wouldn’t mind having. This is unpleasant feeling I really don’t want to have. How did I get it?
How did I get rid of it? Unless your mind has developed the sensitivity of recognizing the type of feelings feelings of that. Now the three feelings we talked about is very general category, typology. But these three feelings in the Abhidharmic tradition, these three feelings could be subdivided into eighteen. Now, that is very very if your meditation is good, you can subdivide it.
Sometimes we just this subdivision of the of the, you know, three feelings in relation to the sixth sense organs. Yeah? Sixth sense organs. So he said, okay. There’s no audio no audio unpleasant feeling, but there’s visual unpleasant feelings.
You know? He’s just so he just nail it down to visual unpleasant feelings. So if you don’t look everywhere, you wouldn’t be exposed to visual unpleasant feelings. So that’s one way one reason why you stay in stay in remote and solitude place. And you don’t hear anything unpleasant, and that’s that’s the one that’s so that’s that’s audially you stop there.
You stop there. Oddly unpleasant feelings because you don’t expose yourself to have company of so many people to to tell you the bad news, to tell you the discursive thoughts of theirs. You know? So when you’re alone, you don’t have you don’t have all sensory, you know, contact which makes us vulnerable to those feelings. So but most difficult of all the five sixth sense organ feelings are mental feelings.
Yeah? Mental feeling is this is what they call the feelings. Because the first first five is mainly maybe you will have a lot of lot of touch feelings, you know, while sitting in meditation. You have you have you have you have the pain and numbness and difficulty with the body that you feel. That is that is the the the the feeling, pleasant or unpleasant feeling with in relation to the the tactile, you know you know, consciousness.
Your tactile consciousness. All of a sudden, you become so conscious about your your tactile awareness. You know? You’re so sensitive, you know. Bottom really becomes big part of you now.
And previously, we never used to think about bottom. We never look in the mirror how is our bottom. But now, really, we we feel that. We really have to look at it. What’s wrong with you?
You know? You see, this is what I mean by tactile awareness. Tactile consciousness. Because rest of the body is but it’s almost sort of sort of stacked on top of it. The bottom is bottom and the leg and knees are the one.
One really has to really know what is all about. This is what I mean by maybe visually you have become less distracted, you know. If you if you have worked out your gaze of the eyes, and then you you really don’t have that many visual, you know, distractions as such, you know. Particularly, if you’re doing the meditation on your own, there’s not unless you doze off, you know. Audially also, if you’re not hearing and listening anything, it’s it’s much and tag and a taste is much easier, you know.
And to smell is is the least of a problem. And particularly you have nice incense. So it’s not but if it’s incense is the South Indian incense, headache. They just don’t have they just don’t have the right right, you know, substance there. Just makes a lot of smoke and not so good for the for the person who is who is for for whom it is made.
And so be careful the incense. So incense but so but if you don’t lot of in lot of incense, then it’s not problem. You know? You know? If you’re not a aromatherapy, you know?
So you really have to really have to deal that. So all the pain that you get through, the numbness you go through, the difficulty you have with the body, is all about governing your tactile consciousness. Now, after the tactile consciousness, if you have governed your tactile consciousness problem, then really it becomes a mental consciousness. It is the thoughts. That really brings us to the third mindfulness.
Mindfulness of thoughts, you know. You know. So, almost then, by the time that you were talking about mindfulness of thought, we really have an object of meditation other than the breath. You could be having one object of meditation, which we will talk about tomorrow. And then so the so the the meditation practice calm abiding meditation slowly ascends its quality and technique of the practices from the grosser reality of tactile self to the subtle reality of mental consciousness, consciousness itself, and it becomes more conscious about its thoughts.
Now it’s not so much a visual or sensory process things as a problem. It’s the thought itself that becomes ever more aware of of itself. Now to be able to you know, therefore, you can see meditation is a long journey. And every step it takes you takes you to a horizon that you never imagined. And you never knew that how how our thought could be worthy, you know, something that is so valuable, I think, to watch to be watching.
When that’s the most most people at the beginning of meditation, that’s the least thing they need. They don’t want any thoughts. And they want to cancel all thoughts, they want to just have mind free of all thoughts, and then they think that’s meditation. That’s the biggest misconception about meditation. That you should be thought free.
It is how you manage the thoughts is the meditation. You cannot make the mind free of thoughts. It is not mind. If there is minding business, it is it is having thought. It just matter.
The difference is which thought. The question is which thought it is, hey, happy to have. And which thought it wants to get rid off. You know? So therefore, the whole particularly in Buddhist meditation where we don’t emphasize of course, we we wouldn’t mind relaxation and feeling good in the meditation as outcome, as a byproduct of meditation.
But that is that is the least purpose of the meditation. So this is why, as we said, the very beginning that to that we are one is doing this meditation in order to aid all living beings so that we can generate love and kindness and compassion, joyfulness, and equanimity. So it’s not just to make us not not temporarily or sessionally feel good, you know. Because if you’re if one is doing that, definitely people do seek a thought free meditation. A completely wrecked mind, empty mind, and and a blank the mind so so to speak.
So that is that is quite un Buddhist. Would would not fit in the category of Buddhist meditation. So in Buddhist meditation, one step at a time, you have a handful thing to be doing. And it’s not merely transcending or pausing or or withdrawing from the senses. But what what why are withdrawing from the sense?
In order to reinforce your sixth sense consciousness and its ability to become aware of everything, the nature of reality as they are. Because senses do tend to bar function as a bar from us knowing the nature of reality. So therefore, we need to need to get get a bit of a bit of independence from the sensory reality. But but other than that other than that, the the the sixth sense consciousness, mental consciousness, when it it is allowed to be on its own, it is quite what is called lucid. The lucency of your mind is only perceivable when it is untarnished by the sensory inputs or sensory, I would say, habitual patterns.
So this is why the in the in the meditation practice of mind of these four mindfulnesses, the mindfulness of the feeling, and mindfulness of the breathing are are one one. Now we