The Gentle Way of Buddhist Meditation
Dhamma Talks by Godwin Samararatne
Hongkong, 1997
Day 1: 6th October 1997 (Chi Lin Nunnery)
Why We Should Meditate
Godwin:
I'm very happy to see some old faces, some old friends and I'm also very happy to see so many new faces. So what I propose to do now is to give a talk on why we should meditate and then we can have a discussion. After the discussion we can meditate for some time and then we will end the session with chanting. Pali chanting and Chinese chanting.
So the question is why should we meditate? What is the importance of meditation? Why is it emphasized so much in the Buddha's teaching? So these are some of the questions that I'm going to explore in my talk.
The word meditation comes from the Pali word Bhavana which means cultivating the mind, developing the mind, mental culture. So the whole emphasis is on the mind. When you read the Buddhist text, you are so amazed about the Buddha's profound and deep statement about the human mind. It is amazing that he should have made this statement 2,600 years ago. In fact, modern psychologists, psychotherapists are also deeply inspired by the Buddha's statement on the human mind.
Meditation: Knowing the Mind, Shaping the Mind, Freeing the Mind
The idea of meditation has been expressed by a writer in these terms: knowing the mind, shaping the mind and freeing the mind. I like to repeat the words : Meditation is knowing the mind, shaping the mind and freeing the mind. So knowing the mind is understanding how the mind is working. If we do not know our mind, really we are like machines. So therefore it is extremely important to know, to understand, how our mind works and when we know our mind, then we can shape the mind. Shaping the mind is developing mastery over our mind and if we do not develop mastery over our mind, what happens is we become slaves to our own mind. So when we become slaves to our mind, then thoughts and emotions control us and that results in more and more suffering. Therefore it is very important to learn to shape the mind and when you learn to shape the mind, then you can achieve a mind that is free. So the importance of meditation is learning to achieve a mind that is free, a mind that is happy, a mind that is peaceful, a mind that has loving kindness.
Achieving a Completely Healthy Mind
It is interesting the things we do to keep our body healthy. We feed our body, we keep the body clean, when the body becomes sick, we go to the doctor and get medicine to cure the illnesses. We do so many things to keep the body healthy. An interesting question is what do we do to keep our mind healthy? Have you given thoughts to this very important question? We have to be clear about what makes our mind sick, what makes our mind unhealthy. What are the symptoms of the human sicknesses of the mind? So meditation is learning from them and achieving a mind that is completely healthy. Some areas where the mind becomes sick, we can consider some emotions as contributing to the illnesses of the human mind. I like to mention some of these emotions and I'm sure everyone here can relate to them. Anxiety, stress, fear, insecurity, sadness. I can draw up a long list which I think, as I have said, we all can relate to. Sometimes we don't realize that they make our mind sick. If we do not know that they can create our sickness, we can continue to have that sickness without finding a solution to the sickness. In one of my talks, I will be speaking about emotions and I will present to you how meditation helps us to work with emotions. When I speak about emotions, I will be interested to hear from you what emotions really bother you in this country. So I will be presenting some practical ways of working with these unpleasant emotions and then finding a way to be free from these emotions.
Taste & Experience Buddhism
Another very important aspect of meditation is that meditation helps us to experience things that arise. There are some who know very well what the Buddha taught, so they are very knowledgeable about Buddhism but they have not experienced anything from Buddhism because they have not meditated. They are like some people who know about meals but they have hardly tasted the food from the meals. So meditation helps us to taste it and when you have tasted it, you achieve a kind of taste for the freedom of the mind. And when you taste it, you really see for yourself how we can free ourselves.
Become Completely Self-Reliant
Related to this is another point, that meditation helps us to become completely self reliant. When you meditate you realize that we have to take responsibility for what is happening in our mind. Sometimes I define meditation with my own words as finding the medicine for the sickness we have created ourselves. So as we create the sickness ourselves, we have to find the medicine. When you are sick, if you want to heal yourself, you cannot tell the others to take the medicine. Buddha emphasized this point very much: to be self reliant, to rely on own efforts. The Buddha said: self effort is the best effort. And when we develop self effort, when we become self reliant, then what happens is we learn to become completely self confident about ourselves. When we have this self confidence and then when we see for ourselves that the medicine is helping, then that gives us more confidence in the medicine and it also helps us to develop faith, confidence in the person who discovered the medicine.
So in my talk so far I have been telling you some benefits, some aspects of meditation. And I have been trying to tell you the importance of meditation. I have been trying to answer the question : why we should meditate. So now I like to pause and then if there are any questions about what I have been saying about meditation, we can discuss them. So please ask questions. When I try to teach meditation to children, I tell them sometimes that meditation is asking questions and finding the answers ourselves. Asking questions like: "Why do we get angry? How is stress created?" So to raise such questions and to find an answer, meditation can be seen as trial and error so therefore I would like that you ask some questions and then we might try to find the answers ourselves.
Q&A
Audience: When we do the meditation and after that, I would sleep. When I fall asleep, I found some vibration in my head, just like someone hit my head but it doesn't hit. What happened? Why does it happen?
Godwin: When we meditate, many things happen in our mind and body, sometimes very very unusual and strange. So what is important, what we are learning in meditation is : whatever is happening in our mind and body, just to know it is happening. And also learning to accept them, learning not to react to them. There are different stages in meditation so you may be experiencing certain stages. Sometimes finding a reason may not necessarily be helpful but rather, as I often say, to learn to make friends with them and to see them as learning experiences and also not to see them as problems and difficulties. So what I like to suggest is, whatever happens when you are meditating, that can be an unpleasant experience sometimes but just to know it, it's just a sensation and just to say OK to it, make friends with it and then it will pass. So I like you to continue and maybe on Sunday we have a day's programme and we can see whether it will happen or not.
Audience: I find your point on how children meditate very interesting. I want to learn something more about teaching children meditation. Firstly, I want to ask: how do children accept the concept of meditation and how do they practice meditation? And the second question is: you just mentioned the way to learn meditation is to learn to ask questions and to answer them, when we ask ourselves questions, what are we going to do then?
Godwin: So the first question is about teaching meditation to children. It is very interesting that trying to teach meditation to children, it has enabled me to learn from them because they have very simple uncomplicated minds. It is interesting for me to see the difference between trying to teach meditation to children and to adults. In a way meditation can be seen as developing a child-like mind and learning to see things as if for the first time, learning to be curious about things and being very honest and genuine about themselves. So I really enjoy being with children and trying to teach them meditation. So to answer your question, I never tell them that it is meditation. I ask them: now would you like to play with our breath? As you know, children love playing, so I suggest let's play with our breath. So I tell them now please see this as a good game. The game is: can you be aware of your breath from moment to moment? And sometimes I tell them to play hide and seek. Sometimes you are with the breath and sometimes you are not with the breath. So let us play the game for 10 to 15 minutes and see what happens. And it is so inspiring for me to see how completely still they sit during those 10 to 15 minutes, how they seem to be enjoying it, very happy smiling friendly faces. When I see adults meditating, I see different expressions on their faces. And what also inspires me most is when I ask them : do you have any questions, do you have any problems, do you have any difficulties, most of the time they say no. It's an interesting question to find out what we have done to our mind. It's a very serious question that we should explore. In fact it is really connected to meditation, related to meditation. So this was the first question and the second question was about, what is it?
[After we have asked ourselves questions, what do we do?]
Good question. Take the case of Siddhattha who became the Buddha. Do you know the question that came to his mind? Very simple questions: Why do people die? Why do people get old? Why do people become sick? Why do people become monks and nuns? So by finding an answer to these simple questions that he asked, he ended by becoming the Buddha. I will give another example. Newton, the scientist. Do you know the simple question that enabled him to discover the very profound scientific theory? Why do apples fall? Simple question but it ended in making a very profound, very important scientific discovery. Someone have said that a genius is one who is continuing to have the curiosity of a child, and we all have this beautiful capacity as children, and as adults we have lost this questioning aspect in us. So relating to meditation, asking questions like: Why do I get angry? When you ask that question and when you try to find an answer, what is the answer you discover? I like to hear the answer from you.
Audience: My friend makes me angry.
Godwin: It's always the other person. So the point is my friend is not behaving in the way I want the friend to behave. So you see from the simple question, you discover the problem is not with my friend but with me by having an expectation of how my friend should be. So as I said earlier about meditation, then you learn to take responsibility for your anger, and we stop blaming others and we start taking responsibility. And that's how a change, a transformation can take place in ourselves from the single question: why do I get angry? I'm happy you are asking questions, so I hope there will be more questions.
Audience: I am calm right now but when my kids get poor marks in school, I get angry although I love my children.
Godwin: I like such practical questions. I think all parents can relate to that question. I know certainly that this happens in Sri Lanka also. So how does meditation help in such situation? One thing you said is that you are now feeling calm, so one point to remember is that we should not expect to be always calm. We can learn from a mind that is calm. We can also learn from a mind that is not calm. If you expect to be always calm, as it happened in your case, when you are not calm, you suffer as a result. You are angry about yourself. You are disappointed about yourself. You give yourself a minus. So I would suggest that in the situation that you described, when you get angry, just know that you are angry. And tomorrow I will be speaking about the importance of the practice of awareness or mindfulness -- a very important aspect of meditation. So the first suggestion I like to offer is just to be aware of the anger, because if you are aware of the anger and just to stay with the anger, you will not be able to perhaps express that anger in a violent way. So just being aware of the anger and not expressing the anger enables us to develop some sort of control, mastery over our anger, so this is the first point. The second suggestion is by being with that after some time, you may recover from the anger. And when you recover from that anger, you ask the question: why did I get angry with my son? I love him so much, and here I'm getting angry, perhaps I'm making him angry. So when you explore that question you realize in a way, the problem is that you have an expectation how your son should be in class. These are reasonable expectations for parents to have but it's another matter to find how far that expectation is realistic. How far is my son capable of meeting my expectations? Shouldn't I find out from my son why he is not doing well in class? This is something very very important because with more and more meditation, we learn to try to understand other persons' behaviour and try to see things from the perspective of the other person rather than project your own expectations on others. So if you can talk to your son in a very friendly, gentle, understanding way: my dear son, what are the difficulties you have in class? This is something very important which the Buddha emphasized, to have a spiritual friendship with everyone that you have to relate to. It is very important for parents to have this kind of friendly relationship with children so that the child is in a position to talk to the parents honestly, in a friendly way, on the difficulties the children are having. I feel this extremely important. I know in Sri Lanka, some children are completely alone, there's no one that they can look for because they are afraid to talk honestly to their parents, they are afraid to talk about their difficulties to teachers, so they are completely lost and it is really sad when children are unable to confide when they are in difficult situations. So I like to stress and emphasize that it is very important in such situation to make a connection with the child and then try to understand what the child is going through, and this would be something very helpful, meaningful rather than getting angry. I think there is time for one more question.
Audience: We have thoughts, we have desires, and suffering. Is it true by meditating you can stop having these thoughts, desires and suffering.
Godwin: It's not so easy. It's interesting you mentioned about thoughts. I feel that it is the most important area in the human mind because from the time we wake up to the time that we go to sleep, what happens? There is continuous thoughts going through our mind. I think everyone here can relate to that. Here, when I'm talking you have your own thoughts going through your mind. I often raise this question: what are you thinking about from morning to night? Can anyone suggest an answer? What are we thinking about from morning to night, without ever stopping. So you see the importance of asking simple questions. What do we think about?
Audience: Most of the time, we think of ourselves, the "I" and "mine", all the time.
Godwin: Absolutely right, even when we are thinking of others, they are always related to you. Isn't that interesting? And the next question is in relation to ourselves and others, what do we do with our thoughts? What we are doing is we make judgement. And the simple way I describe that is we give pluses and we give minuses. When you remember some good thing you have done, you feel happy, big plus. When we remember some wrong things we have done, some mistake that we have done, some bad things we have done, big minus. And we do the same in relation to the others. The bad things, the wrong things the others have done, we give them minuses. Good things others have done, we give them pluses. So isn't it interesting from morning to night, we become teachers giving pluses and minuses? I know some people who live in a hell they have created and in that hell, only minuses exist. They have thoughts only about their mistakes, about their shortcomings. And in relation to the others, we have similar thoughts, so by that we can create a hell and we can really feel sad and live in depression, so this is how we create our own suffering with our thoughts. And you will realize there is a connection with thoughts and emotions. An interesting question to find out is: what comes first, the thought or emotion? Have you discovered the answer? What comes first, the thought or the emotion? Do you see the importance of meditation? So anyway, I will be discussing these things as we go along. Going back to the question, what we can do is what I will be talking tomorrow -- the importance of awareness. With awareness, just to observe the thoughts that are going through our mind and just to realize how we are using thoughts destructively which create suffering for ourselves and suffering for others. And also we can use thoughts creatively which I will be talking about later on. And the question you asked about desires, there again you see a relationship, connection between thoughts and desires. As I said, this is the importance of meditation. This is why the Buddha made such important, very very profound statements about how the mind is working. and through that understanding by using awareness, you see how we create our own suffering, our own problems. Through that realization is to free ourselves from suffering and problems, this is what meditation is. So we will be discussing these very important issues as we go along in the next few days.
Anyway I'm very happy that you asked some very good questions and now I would suggest you take a small break. So you can go out, and come back when we ring the bell, and then we can meditate. So I suggest, please make an effort to be silent and also please make an effort to be mindful. Just to walk slowly and just to know what is happening when you are walking. And as we have discussed about thoughts, just to know what thoughts you are having in your mind, just be alert, be attentive. So during the next 5 minutes, please also let us learn just to watch, just to discover what is happening in our mind and body from moment to moment and when you hear the gong, please come back slowly and in silence. Thank you very much.
[Break] - [Guided meditation] - [Chanting]
Thank you very much for the beautiful chanting. So tomorrow's talk will be about the practice of mindfulness and after the talk, we will distribute a book on a text which is based on the practice of mindfulness. So I like to suggest that tomorrow, during the day, please make an effort just to know what is happening in your mind and body from moment to moment as far as possible. Just try to know the thoughts that you will be having during the day tomorrow. And please see how we give pluses and minuses to ourselves and others and please see the connection between thoughts and emotions. And I would also like to suggest to please make an effort to be friendly, to be gentle, to be kind towards our mind and body. If you practise these things, what I will be presenting tomorrow will make sense in your own experience. So once again, I like to thank you very much for asking questions and then responding to my suggestions. So I'm looking forward very much to meeting you tomorrow also. And may you all be well, may you all be happy, may you all be peaceful and may you learn to be free of suffering and when you go to sleep, may you sleep peacefully and wake up peacefully.
Day 2: 7th October 1997
Importance of awareness
Godwin:
I like to welcome you once again. Like yesterday, I'll be giving a talk and then after that, a discussion, then we'll be meditating and then ending with some chanting.
The subject of today's talk as you know is "The importance of the practice of mindfulness", which is something very very important for the practice of meditation.
I am very happy to see some of you reading the little booklet we are bringing out today on the Satipatthana Sutta which really deals with the practice of mindfulness. It is also very nice to see some of you meditating.
Absence of Mindfulness or Awareness: We Become Machines
Yesterday I suggested you make an effort to do some practice of mindfulness today, so that what I'm going to say will make some sense in your experience. If we do not practise mindfulness or awareness, what will happen to us is we become more and more like machines. We will be doing things mechanically, habitually, repetitively and automatically. I think in this modern world there are lots of technology and machines, so that I think in a way human beings are being more and more machine like, automatic. So by doing this we are forgetting the reality, the art of living. And what is very unfortunate is when human beings are becoming more and more like machines, they are also losing the importance of feelings. So when human beings don't feel the very important aspect of feelings in them, then they cannot feel love for oneself, they cannot feel love for others, they cannot feel warmth for oneself, warmth for others. Perhaps let me explain why there is such a lot of violence in the modern world. So we become more and more violent to ourselves and more and more violent towards others, all these are related in a way to the absence of awareness, to the absence of knowing what is in our mind and body. So this is the first point I want to make about the importance of mindfulness or awareness.
Experience the Present Moment
Another very important aspect of mindfulness is that it helps us to experience the present moment, the "here" and the "now". In a way it is funny to think that most of the time during the day we either live in the past about what has happened or we live in the future on what is going to happen. The past and the future are not real but only the present is real, so it shows that human beings, because of their lack of awareness, are living in an unreal world which does not correspond to reality. To make this clearer, let me give an example of what is happening now. Physically you can be present here, you may even see me but mentally you can be completely elsewhere. So to be completely present, to know what I'm saying, you have to be here and now and being present, otherwise as I said, physically you'll be present but mentally you'll be elsewhere. A meditation master described his practice as: When I eat I eat, when I walk I walk, when I sleep I sleep. The words sound very simple but it means that he was most of the time being present with what he was doing. An interesting question arises: what did he mean when he said "when he sleeps he sleeps"? One interpretation of this is that even when we are asleep, with the dreams that we see, we are in a way half awake. So we don't really experience deep sleep. However, for most of us, when we are awake during the day, what happens? We are half asleep! This is what we call "living". So if you really want to start living, you have to develop this very very important quality of being present, of being alert, of being awake. That is why the Buddha is called the fully awakened one. The whole practice of meditation and practice of mindfulness is a way of awakening our mind, awakening the Buddha nature in us. And when we awaken the Buddha nature in us, the quality of living becomes so different. Now please realize that being in the present doesn't mean that we don't have to use what we consider as the past and the future. Sometimes we have to plan about the future. If you did not plan about the future, you couldn't have been present here. And if you forget the past, you'll not be able to go back to your home. So again what is important for us to realize is that through awareness to see for ourselves how we are using the past and the future. Psychologists say that sometimes depression and sadness are due to the way we are relating to the past, and anxiety in relation to the future. So here again with awareness, we need to understand how we use the past and the future consciously and deliberately, and then at other times being present in the here and now.
Use Awareness in Everyday Life
Related to that is something which I'm going to emphasize very much and I consider very important. It is to use awareness in everyday life. Even small things like brushing our teeth, combing our hair, drinking, eating. As I said earlier, we have been so used to doing these things like machines. So if you can really learn to practise awareness, mindfulness in everyday life, then meditation becomes a way of life.
I live in a lay meditation centre in Sri Lanka. What we emphasize in our centre is: how to integrate daily life, how to integrate your ordinary life with meditation. Otherwise what happens is that life is one thing, meditation is another. So if you are really serious about the practice, as I said, meditation has to be a way of living. So when you read the text that we are distributing today and the text which mentions the practice of awareness, you'll see the Buddha telling us to be mindful of most of the things that happen to us during the day. You'll be surprised to read that the Buddha says even when we are in the toilet, be mindful, be aware, be conscious of what is happening in the toilet. I call this the toilet meditation. Sometimes when I visit some rich homes and when I go to their toilets I see lots of books, magazines and things like that in the toilet, so I would suggest that next time when you are in your toilet, you'll see such a difference if you can just be conscious, just be present while you are in the toilet.
Another very important aspect is eating. We do such a lot for the purpose of eating but do we really eat consciously? Is your awareness present while you are eating? Are you conscious of what you are tasting? Are you conscious of what you are chewing? Now chewing is a very very important aspect. If you can make an effort to consciously chew our food, you'll realize a difference when you are eating. So when you consider this, you'll realize that meditation is related to ordinary things, not extraordinary things, not special things. Some have the wrong idea that meditation is having some special experience, some extraordinary experience. But when you consider some of the meditation techniques, they are ordinary things, simple things like being aware of the breath, being conscious of walking, being aware of eating. So meditation is simple, practical, ordinary things in life which we do consciously and then these ordinary things become extraordinary. If you can learn to do these ordinary things, then you'll realize that even for ordinary things you can do as if for the first time. Then you see others. Can you see them as if you are seeing for the first time? Can you relate to yourself as if you are relating to yourself as if for the first time without our past images, without our past judgments about ourselves and others? Can you see a tree or flowers or Buddha image as if for the first time? Please try that and you'll see that the quality of seeing is so different, it becomes so alive, it becomes so fresh, it becomes so innocent.
There is a very important book. It is called "The Dhammapada". And in "The Dhammapada" it is said that if you are not aware, if you are not mindful, if you are not awake, you are like people who are dead. So being like a dead person and being like a machine are the same.
Explore & Investigate Unpleasant Experience
Another very important aspect of awareness is learning to explore, investigate with awareness our unpleasant experience. There is a beautiful simile which I like in one of the Buddhist texts. It compares the doctor who is a surgeon and is trying to operate. So the doctor has to find out where he has to operate, where the wound is. So to find out, he has to use an instrument. So once with this instrument he finds out what the problem is, then with the surgeon's knife, he cuts it off, he heals it, he cures it. So what the simile is saying is that with awareness we can find out, we can explore, we can investigate, we can discover and with wisdom, we can work with the problem that we discovered. So in everyday life, we have problems like anger, anxiety, fears, sadness, guilt, so all these things really create suffering for us. Like the surgeon's instrument, we can find out, we can learn, we can discover, we can explore, we can experiment with them. And then when you explore you'll realize that you are creating the problem, and then when you see that, you can use wisdom to free yourself from that. You can use wisdom to understand what is happening in our mind and body. So through this understanding, we can bring about a change or even working with them, investigating them, exploring them. That unpleasant experience itself becomes an object of meditation. So please realize that meditation is not always having pleasant, positive experiences. Actually unpleasant experiences do not create any problems for us unless we of course identify ourselves with them. But the real challenge we have is also learning how to work with these unpleasant experiences, how to work with physical pain, how to work with mental pain. This is much more important than just experiencing pleasant positive experiences. I'll be giving a separate talk on emotions so when I speak on emotions I might try to relate, speaking about emotions in this culture. What are the emotions that bother you? What are the emotions that create suffering for you? So I'll be presenting tools, presenting ways and means of working with these tools using meditation. I'm afraid I have to stop now. So I've touched on some important aspects of mindfulness and awareness. Like yesterday, I would like to hear questions, specially practical questions relating to your life.
Q&A
Audience: When we notice emotion arising, like anger, who exactly is observing this anger?
Godwin: This is the beautiful thing, quality of awareness. So with this quality of awareness, we can know: Ah, now I am angry and now I have fear and now there is no fear. So this was the point I was trying to make. If you do not have awareness, you don't know what is happening in your mind and then by this knowing, we can understand and then develop wisdom and then develop mastery over what is happening in our mind.
The question you want to know is who is observing the anger. This itself is a very important area to inquire. Thing like this can be a very powerful technique. When we are angry, when we have fear, when we have doubts, ask the question: who is experiencing this? And when you really inquire into it deeply, you'll realize that there is no "who" apart from what you are experiencing. Then you'll realize that these states of mind arise and pass away due to certain conditions, but we have a sense of ownership and say: this is my anger, my fear, my joy, my sadness. So this question on "who" helps us to realize that there is no owner but just conditions arising and conditions passing away. This is the deepest aspect of the Buddha's teaching.
Audience: When we see our own children doing something wrong we will get angry, but if we see other people's children doing something wrong, we won't get angry and the same applies to our wife or spouse. So is it correct to say that we should get angry with everything we see or what attitude should we take to handle the situation?
Godwin: Very good question. Because you realize that you are angry only when your child behaves in a particular way, or only when your wife behaves in a particular way, but others' children can behave in any way. You have a very important realization. And the important realization is as I said earlier, people with whom we identify ourselves with, people whom we think we own, they should behave in one way, other people can behave in any other ways. So we can even carry the point further. When your son becomes sick you become sad. When the neighbour's son becomes sick, no problem. When your mother dies, sadness. When your friend's mother dies, no problem. Aren't we funny ? So when you inquire into this: why am I doing this? Then you'll realize that we have this sense of ownership. This is mine. It belongs to me. And for what belong to me, only things expected by us should happen to them, for others, there is no problem. So the real practice again, the real deep practice is: can we see everything as far as possible without the sense of ownership? Can we relate to suffering in whatever form it arises? It can be with your son, it can be with the neighbour's son, it can be with anyone. This is real loving kindness. I'll be speaking on loving kindness and on that day, we'll be distributing a very important book on loving kindness and in that book it is said that the best way, the most noble way is like a mother having affection to her only child. If we can relate to every one in this way, isn't that a beautiful way to live? There is a beautiful phrase in this connection: boundless compassion, compassion which has no boundary, which has no division. So slowly, gently, gradually, this is what we have to develop, developing the qualities of the heart. I'll be speaking more about this when we are talking about loving kindness which is something I emphasize very much. As I said earlier, human beings now are losing these qualities of the heart. So it is very important for us to at least to know this and make an effort to open our hearts to ourselves, to open our hearts to others.
Audience: During my meditation sometimes I get a little confused. It seems that I'm watching my thoughts or my own mind and be aware of what I'm thinking. Now can you tell us is this the right direction: to watch with our mind, what our mind is working on?
Godwin: As I said earlier, you can say it is mindfulness or awareness that helps us or you can say it is the mind watching the mind but what is important is not the way to understand but the practical watching, the practical observing, the practical mindfulness that is more important than the theoretical question : is it the mind watching or is it the awareness watching? But what is important is to develop this quality of alertness, of vigilance, of being awake, of knowing what is happening, this is what is important. So after the discussion, we'll be trying to practise this.
Audience: You said earlier that we do things mechanically. I can observe that I am a machine but I don't want to be a machine. For example, breakfast. I have the same breakfast every day and I know I'm like a machine. How can we not behave like a machine although we observe the fact that we are acting like a machine?
Godwin: I'm happy my friend Peter has asked that question. A very very important practical question: how to start the day with breakfast? So I'll give some practical suggestions: how to relate to such a situation without being like a machine. I know with breakfast you have very little time. But even with little time, please try tomorrow when you eat breakfast how far you can practise these things:
When you see the food on the table, it can be fruits, it can be bread, it can be anything. Spend a few minutes just trying to see it as if for the first time. Look at the fruits and the bread very closely and see the different aspects of what you see at that time.
Another very beautiful practice in traditional Buddhist countries is before we eat, to feel grateful for those who have prepared the meal or at least to feel grateful that I'm able to eat my breakfast. There are people in this world who do not have breakfast early in the morning. So to feel grateful. As you know, machines cannot feel grateful.
The third suggestion is, as I said earlier, please feel the difference, make an effort tomorrow when you eat your breakfast, take your time and try to consciously chew your food, eating very slowly and consciously. There is a saying among the Red Indian Americans that they drink their food which means that they chew their food until it becomes liquid. And you'll realize that when you chew your food slowly and consciously, you don't require much food, this is a very important discovery you might make.
Another very important point the Buddha had told meditators about eating is to avoid two extremes. Do you know what the two extremes are? One extreme is eating too much and the other extreme is eating too little. So how to know you are eating the right quantity? Very interesting question. How do we know it? By listening to the body while eating. If you are listening to music while you are eating, you'll not be able to listen to your stomach. I like this phrase very much: listening to your body, listening to yourself, listening to your thoughts, listening to your emotions. So if you can eat your breakfast in this way, it's a wonderful beginning of the day and then during the day you can have this kind of awareness as far as possible, not the whole time, not to have moment to moment of awareness. But if you can have moment to moment awareness, it is excellent. Then during the day, as I have said, you'll be living not as machines but as human beings.
One last suggestion is at the end of the day, it is a very good practice to take your mind backwards and find out how you spent the day. Find out the moments when you are conscious, when you are aware and the moments when you were like a machine. And just find out how many times you got angry and also find out the times when you are not angry, this is very important. So when you do this kind of reviewing, sometimes you'll be surprised what a good person you have been. And this kind of reflection, this kind of reviewing can bring about a self transformation in a very natural way because you learn to see more and more inwards rather than outwards.
So now we have to stop our discussion. Now what I would like to suggest is to take a small break and during this break you can go to the toilet, you can do some walking but as we did yesterday and as we were discussing mindfulness, please find out in this break how far you can be conscious, how far you can be mindful of what is happening in your mind and body. To do this exercise you have to be completely silent. So with a silent mind, please make an effort to get an idea of what mindfulness is and then when you come back, I will try to give a guided meditation in the practice of mindfulness, so this would be a kind of preparation for the meditation. Thank you very much. I will ring the bell in a few minutes, then please come back. Continue to have this awareness, mindfulness.
[Break]
To begin with, we try to feel happy. Feeling happy that you came here at 7:30 to listen to a talk and now that you are practising meditation. So let us spend some time now just feeling happy with ourselves, that we get this opportunity to learn to meditate.
Feeling happy that you are trying to develop this quality of mindfulness, awareness, of being awake.
Try to feel that happiness in the area of your heart. Let us now feel grateful that we have got this opportunity to meditate.
Feeling grateful is a very important spiritual quality that you may develop.
Can we feel grateful that we can sit completely still? And can you become conscious, aware that your body is sitting completely still, completely relaxed?
Let us now experiencing what it is to be in the present. So can you be with the peace and stillness in this room? Can you feel it now? Not thinking about the past, not thinking about the future but feeling the peace in this room now.
The past is gone, we cannot change the past. The future has yet to come. So let us experience the joy of the present moment.
So if thoughts about the past and thoughts about the future would arise in your mind, gently let go of them and come back to the present moment, the here and the now.
So with awareness, you are learning to let go of your thoughts, you are learning to control your thoughts, you are learning to develop mastery over your thoughts, by learning to let go of them and then come back to the present moment.
Just feeling, just knowing the stillness, the peace in this room.
Maybe you don't even hear any sound.
Now please open your eyes consciously and mindfully. And you change your posture, please do it slowly, consciously, mindfully. Please do not think that the meditation is over.
Let us now do some chanting. The chanting can be also a meditation. Using the chant to experience the present moment and also there will be some pauses between the chants, just feel the stillness, the space that the chanting creates in your mind.
So firstly there'll be Pali chant and then there'll be Chinese chant.
[Chanting]
Day 3: 8th October 1997
Importance of the Dhamma
Godwin:
Consumerism
Most people believe that materials are important. Happiness lies in material things. In fact, the more materials you get, the more dissatisfied you are; the more dissatisfied you are, the more materials you want to get. Buddha has given a very powerful simile to describe this condition. He compared this to a dog with a bone. So the dog doesn't let go of the bone and is just holding on to it and is still hungry and still dissatisfied and still suffers from fear in losing that bone. Related to this serious problem of materialism is another aspect of this, another manifestation of this, now called consumerism. So it's a real challenge for modern man to live in consumer societies and still how not to be affected by the consumerism around you. As I see it, consumerism has many aspects but I see two dangerous aspects in consumerism. One is people are not clear about what they need and what their greed is. It's interesting, according to the Dhamma, we need certain things, food, clothing, shelter and medicine, what is called the four requisites. So the four necessary things are things that human beings need. So there's a place for material things but then as I said, when they become our goals and then when you are confused about greed and need, this is where it can lead to dissatisfaction and suffering as I mentioned.
Another dangerous aspect of consumerism is that the society that you live in starts manipulating you, and the danger is that you don't know that you are being manipulated. So you become like puppets, puppets in the hands of society that can create your own desires, can create your own greed and it leads to more and more frustration. So isn't this a sad situation of the human condition where human beings have the potentialities of becoming free, of becoming enlightened? We have the Buddha nature in us but this aspect is not looked at and then we become victims of the society that we live in. The simile that has come to my mind about this situation is that though we are grown up, we have become still dependent on what I call "toys". I'm interested to know the toys that human beings go into in this culture, this country. What I mean by toys are external things where you think are happiness, joy, peace and you start acquiring toys and you change one toy for another and your whole life is being spent on getting toys and then you are dissatisfied. So can I hear from you some of the toys that you are interested in acquiring.
We Become Our Own "Toy"
Audience: Shopping.
Audience: Housing.
Godwin: In a way houses are necessary but then you are not satisfied with a small house, so the house becomes bigger and bigger and then that can become a toy and you are still dissatisfied. May be a beautiful new house but you're not happy. May be until you go into a bigger house. That can be a problem.
Audience: Computers.
Godwin: Now that toy has even been introduced to Sri Lanka. Anyway we can draw up a long list of toys. An interesting question is: is meditation also a toy? Is there a relationship between these toys and meditation?
Audience: Yes.
Godwin: I would suggest that with meditation, you become your own toy. This is the importance of the Dhamma. This is the importance of the Buddha's wonderful teaching. When you become your own toy, you can be happy, contented, peaceful with yourself. So the need for external toys, external things drop away because you find the joy and happiness from within. A very important aspect of this is learning to enjoy your own company. When mediators come to the centre I live in Sri Lanka, I tell them to spend some time alone and see what happens when you are alone and see what happens when you are alone with yourself. It's interesting. Some of the people who come there have never spent some time completely alone with themselves, without any toys. So what happens? They become lonely, they become bored. What does it show about ourselves? We cannot stay with us for more than 10 or 15 minutes at least and we want to escape from ourselves. So the importance of the Dhamma is that you realize that, you work through that and as I said, you learn to be your best friend. You learn to be self-contained, self-contented with oneself. Such a person is described in the Dhamma as someone who is at home wherever he is. So such a person can be happy with oneself, being alone, and such a person can be happy with others.
Not to Create Suffering Because of Making Mistakes
I like to touch on another aspect which shows the importance of the Dhamma is that with the practice of the Dhamma in any situation in life, you can see the Dhamma in any situation in life, as I said yesterday, even unpleasant experiences will become learning experiences. I know in this culture, people are afraid to make mistake because of the emphasis on wanting to be perfect. With this model of perfection, what happens is that when we make a mistake, we beat ourselves, we hate ourselves, we lose our self-confidence, we see ourselves as worthless. In my language, you see only minuses in yourself and when you see minuses in yourself, you see minuses in others so that you can create a hell for only minuses. So the importance of the Dhamma is that it enables us not to create suffering in this way because of our mistakes but as I said, we learn to ask the question: what can I learn from my mistakes? What does it indicate about myself? So that this kind of inquiry has to be done in a very friendly, gentle, understanding way without any minuses. Then our mistakes themselves help us to grow in the spiritual path. Isn't that a beautiful way of living? Learn from our mistakes and then when you see mistakes in others, you also learn to relate to the mistakes of others in an entirely different way. So we learn to appreciate our humanness, not the idea of perfection. Then we learn to appreciate the humanness of others. So the importance of the teaching is that we see clearly how we create our own suffering and through that realization, then it becomes clear, only we can be free of the suffering ourselves. Then we become self-reliant. Then we learn to have self-confidence that whatever arises, I know how to handle them with the help of the Dhamma. Then you learn to be your own teacher. And as the Buddha said, you learn to be a light unto yourself.
Life Becomes Your Teacher
One last point on this point. I have had the good fortune to meet many masters, many gurus, many teachers from many traditions. Do you know which master, which guru has inspired me? It is life itself. Life becomes our best teacher. So thanks to the Dhamma, when you realize the importance of the Dhamma, life becomes your teacher. And sometimes life can be a very hard teacher also, but it is always a good teacher. It can indicate to us what we are really are. So now I will stop and if you have any questions, please ask them. In the last few days, you have been asking very good practical questions relating to life, so I hope today also. I touched on some areas which are related to your life here, so please feel free to ask any questions and let us see how the Dhamma, how the Buddha's teachings can help us to work with these problems.
Q&A
Audience: I remember in the Nikaya or Agamma, Buddha always taught his students to be their own uniba, it means an island. Even when he was dying, the last lesson he gave his students was: be your own island. I think this bears very direct similarity to what you told us. We always have to learn form ourselves.
Godwin: Yes and also and I said, from life. So it means that when we live, if you are really sensitive and open, and if you are really practising the teaching, then as I said, you learn how to relate to everything, what happens to you in life, what happens in relation to others, to the teaching. So as I said these experiences we have in life, they are used for our spiritual growth. There's a teacher who said that compost. Compost have things which are not considered useful, considered as dirty which we throw away. So all these things, if we can collect them, they can be used for the growth of vegetables and fruits. So I would say that what we learn from life, our mistakes can be seen as compost, that they can be used for our own spiritual growth. It's only then, as it was said, that we can be an island to oneself, that you can be self-reliant on oneself but what is important is if you have the conclusion that you know everything, that is the end of learning. So it is very important to have this "don't know" mind whereby we can learn from anything and we can learn from anyone. This is something very very important in the Buddha's teaching. Any other questions?
Audience: How can we be our own toy and be satisfied with ourselves, how can we be our good friends?
Godwin: It is interesting that for different reasons, we become our own enemies. And then we think that the enemy is outside ourselves. So we are trying to find the enemy outside ourselves without realizing the biggest enemy is inside ourselves. One aspect of being your enemy is as I said, seeing only your mistake, seeing only your shortcomings, seeing only your minuses. This can be a very very self-destructive aspect where you are your own enemy.
Another aspect related to this point is that you don't see the positive side in you, you don't see the good things that you have been doing. I meet many good people and they are following the spiritual path, but because of this tendency to be self-destructive, they don't see their own worthiness, they don't see their value, they refuse to see the Buddha nature in them. So when you realize this, when you know this, that you are your own enemy, then you learn to work on this condition, on this situation. This is the importance of awareness which we discussed yesterday. So with awareness, you catch yourself, you realize what you are doing to yourself, that you are your own enemy.
And another aspect is this very beautiful meditation of loving kindness. I emphasize this meditation very much. On Friday, I think I will be talking about meditation on loving kindness and it is psychologically very interesting. This meditation of loving kindness begins with oneself. So it shows that we cannot be friendly to others unless we are friendly to ourselves. So meditation on loving kindness helps us to be our own best friend, it helps us to make a connection with ourselves.
Another aspect of meditation on loving kindness is it helps us to forgive ourselves. As I said earlier, accept our humanness and when we learn to accept our humanness, then we learn to accept the humanness of others. So then it helps to be friendly with ourselves and friendly to others.
Another aspect of being your best friend is that we don't realize how we affect our own body in a unwholesome, unskilful way with our behaviour. So when you make this connection with yourself, there is a change that takes place, a transformation takes place so that whatever you do, your words, your thoughts, will be always be related to the skilful, the wholesome way, which should be helping you in your spiritual path. I'll be speaking more about this on the day I will be speaking on loving kindness and on that day, we will be distributing a very very important little booklet on the practice of loving kindness. Any other question?
Audience: You warned us of the dangers of consumerism and materialism, obviously there is certain renunciation to those things. Could you give us some advice on how to begin the renunciation so it's not all at once and such an overpowering obstacle?
Godwin: As I said, these are one of the greatest challenges we have: how to live in a materialist society where there is consumerism and still not be affected by them. So I'll try to offer some practical suggestions. So one suggestion that I would like to offer is that when you see things which you think you need them, again this is the importance of awareness, to catch yourself and to ask the question: do I really need it? And ask the very profound question: Why do I need this? When this obsession comes to possess something, we never ask the question: do I really need it? Why am I needing it? So when you are living in a consumer society and when you raise this question, you realize that it is because others are using them, and because others are using them, you want to be like them. So without your knowledge, you get caught in what is called the rat race. So your whole life becomes a competition, to compete with others.
Another practical suggestion I like to offer is learning to say "yes" to some things and learning to say "no" to certain things. What happens to us is that due to different reasons, we have been used to pampering ourselves. Pampering is always saying yes to whatever, the body or the mind. So what is important in the practice is again finding out that you're pampering yourself and then to say no in a very gentle friendly way. So it is very important in life, learning to say no to certain things. This is the only way to work on some other things that we have become dependent on.
The third suggestion I like to offer is, in a way, an indirect one. So with more and more practice, as I said, when you learn to be your best friend, when you have made a connection with yourself, then naturally you don't have to make an effort. You can live in a consumer society but then you are not affected by the environment. In this connection, there is a beautiful Buddhist symbol. The Buddhist symbol is being like a lotus. Where does the lotus grow? In muddy water. Now the lotus flower is able to grow in that muddy water without being affected by the muddy water around it. So this is the importance of the Buddha's teaching, that when you live within society, within the environment, you will be able to steady your way and not be affected by what is happening externally because a shift has been taking place inside you.
I think there is time for one more question.
Audience: I always feel bored when I'm alone. Can you tell us your actual experience on how you enjoy your life alone?
Godwin: To give a brief answer, when we are alone, when we feel lonely, when we feel bored, so what we do is, when these states of mind would arise, we give in to them, we try to change that by doing something. So the simple answer is hereafter when you have loneliness, when you have boredom, don't escape from them, go through the loneliness, go through the boredom. Yesterday I said a very important aspect of meditation is learning to go through unpleasant experiences, whether it is physical or mental. So in the beginning, it will be very unpleasant but then, this is the importance of the practice. So you have to go through the unpleasant experience and then, when you go through that, then from loneliness you experience what is aloneness which is entirely different from loneliness, thereby we learn to enjoy our own company.
So thank you very much for asking very useful practical questions. So now let us take a small break. So today the break I would like to suggest, to reflect. Reflection can be a very important part of meditation. So the reflection I would like to suggest is to reflect on the things that we have discussed today. And in that reflection, to see what was discussed, how it can be relevant, how can it relate to yourself. So I like to suggest that during the break, to use reflection in this way. And then after that, after some time, I will ring the bell, and when you can come back, I will present a very important meditation today. So you can do this reflection whilst seated or even when walking, whichever you prefer, you can just start the reflection.
[Break]
Please sit in a comfortable position because it is very important that in meditation not to move when we are meditating. Please have your spine erect but relaxed.
Please allow the mind to do what it likes. If thoughts are arising, let any thoughts arise, thoughts about the past, thoughts about the future.
So let us learn to make friends with thoughts and just know from moment to moment what thoughts are arising in your mind. So it is very important to be alert and to be awake from moment to moment.
Now can you allow any emotion to arise, especially emotions we don't like, that we push away, that we repress, that we control. Can we allow such emotions to arise? If they are arising, can we just allow them?
If you are having any such unpleasant experience, can we learn to make friends with them, can we learn to relate to them without a minus?
And if there are no unpleasant emotions, just to know there are no unpleasant emotions.
So thoughts, emotions, sensations, learning to see them just as they are, like a mirror-like mind. No plus, no minus, just being with whatever is happening. Be alert and awake.
Learning to feel friendly towards our thoughts, learning to feel friendly towards our emotions, learning to be friendly towards our sensations whatever the sensation is.
Now please open your eyes slowly and when you change the posture, please do it with awareness. And please do not think the meditation is over.
Let us now do some chanting. It is very nice that a group of spiritual friends can chant together, so please everyone just join the chanting.
[Chanting]
Day 4: 9th October 1997
Mindfulness on Breathing
Godwin:
I like to welcome you once again. As you notice, the talk this evening is on focusing our attention on our in-breath and our out-breath. This is one of the most well known and popular meditation techniques in all the Buddhist traditions. And it is also said that the Buddha became enlightened with the help of this technique. So let us see why this technique is so important.
Just to Know What Is Happening in Our Mind and Body
In Pali, this technique is described as Anapanasati, which means mindfulness of the in-breath and the out-breath. So in this meditation, the whole emphasis is on developing awareness and developing mindfulness. As we know, breathing takes place mechanically. So what is happening mechanically, we are trying to develop mindfulness, awareness. And as the whole emphasis is on mindfulness, what is very important for you to remember is that whatever is happening in our mind and body when we are practising this technique, we should learn to just to know, just to be mindful, just to be conscious of what's happening. So when you have thoughts, please don't consider them as a disturbance or as a distraction, but rather be aware that you are having thoughts. If you are hearing sounds, you just know you are hearing sounds. So if you are feeling different sensations in the body, whatever sensations you are experiencing, just know that you are experiencing different sensations. So you know these things are happening, you become mindful of these things and then just come back to your breath. So there is no need to have a battle when we are meditating on this technique. I often say that you have enough battles in life, please do not make meditation another battle. The whole idea of meditation is to experience freedom, to experience joy, to experience lightness, to be free of suffering but if you make it a battle, meditation itself becomes a source of suffering. So please remember this, please realize this, that the whole emphasis of this technique is just knowing or just being mindful or just being conscious of what is happening and then to spend more and more time with your breath, without a battle.
Experience the Present Moment
Another very important aspect of this technique is that it helps us to experience the present moment even for a few minutes. Because breathing is always taking place now, it is always happening now, if we are mindful or conscious of breathing even for a few minutes, you can experience what it is to be here, what it is to be present. Otherwise, most of the time we are lost with either the past or the future and we even don't know whether we are in the past or the future. So there can be lot of confusion, lot of disorder in our minds but this technique, just by being in the present, it helps us to experience the present moment even for a few moments.
See Our Breath as Our Friend
Another important point to remember is that we need to make a connection with our breath and the way we can make a connection with our breath is to see our breath as our friend. So let us see in what way the breath is our friend. One thing is that he or she is the only friend who is with us all the time. I don't think we have any friend who is with us all the time. So breath is the only friend who is with us all the time, always. Another reason is even when we are sleeping, our friend is active. Do you have any friends who will be with you when you are sleeping? But the breath, whether you are sleeping or whether you are not sleeping, it's always with us.
Our "Friend" Helps Us to Recover from Emotions
Another reason why he or she is our best friend is, as I said earlier, it is always helping us to experience the present moment. And the moment you experience the present moment, those moments are moments of freedom. Related to that is that our friend, the breath, whenever we are having an emotion, if you at that moment think of your friend, please try that, there is an immediate recovery from that emotion and then you can experience some space because you come back to the present moment. A friend of mine asked me yesterday that when he is at the traffic lights, he becomes impatient. I think we can all relate to this situation, especially when we are late for an appointment and you see only the red light. So poor red light. You can be angry with the red light, you can be impatient about the red light and this can create lots of suffering for us. So I told my friend, the next time he finds himself in such a situation, just relax, spend some time with your breath. So earlier you were hating the red light, now you can feel grateful for the red light because thanks to the red light, you can be with your friend, the breath. So I like to repeat that whenever you are having any unpleasant emotions, it can be stress, it can be anger, it can be fear, it can be anxiety, it can be guilt, any unpleasant emotion that create our suffering, no sooner you think of your friend and spend sometime with the in-breath and the out-breath, what happens to that emotion? I will tell you a simple reason why we can find relief in such a situation. The simple reason is when we are having an emotion, what make it bigger, what make it worse are our thoughts. So that in such a situation, if you can spend a few minutes with our friend, there is no room for thoughts to arise and there is an immediate recovery.
Our "Friend" Can Help Us When We Die
Another moment, a very important moment our friend can help us is at the time we die. In fact in one of the texts, it is said that if you learn to practise this technique and if you learn to make a connection with your breath, at the moment you are dying and if you are conscious, immediately your attention can come to the breath. I'm very much interested in this work people do with dying people, helping dying people to die peacefully. It is interesting that one of the techniques they used is focusing on breathing. So isn't it really valuable our friend helps us to live peacefully and helps us to die peacefully.
Forget Our Identification
Another beautiful aspect of our friend is that when we are with our friend even for a few minutes, all our identifications, that you are Chinese, Sri Lanka, German, English, all this is forgotten. In this world, there are these different divisions, racial divisions, religious divisions. Some of the problems in the modern world, maybe they recognize these divisions. So when you are with the breath, all these identifications drop away and then it is just the in-breath and the out-breath. So breathing is just breathing whether it is a Buddhist, whether it is a Christian, whether it is a Hindu, it is just the breath.
Experience the Calmness & Wisdom
Another aspect, maybe the last one, as time is running out, is that when we are with the breath, we can experience some calm, some space, some stillness in our mind. In Buddhist terms, this aspect is described as Samadhi, which is calm, tranquility, stillness. So it is interesting that this technique has the aspect of experiencing Samadhi, calm, and also as I said, it helps us to experience some insight, some wisdom. As I said, it helps us to see thoughts as just thoughts, just to mirror our thoughts, just experiencing the sensations, just experiencing sounds, so we can have this very important Buddhist insight: learning to see things just as they are.
How This Technique Help Us in Everyday Life
An interesting question is: does this technique help us in everyday life or only helps us when we are sitting on a cushion? So I would suggest that as I said, whilst sitting, we have this insight, we develop the skills, we develop awareness, we develop a non-reactive equanimous mind and then, what is more important, is to have such a mind in everyday life. So what I try to do in my talk is to present some points, some aspects about the importance of this technique of being aware of our breathing. Maybe there are more points but I think I have no time. I would like to now invite any questions about what have been said and any questions about this practice.
Q&A
Audience: I would like to know what is the difference between the meditation we are learning now and the meditation that are taught by other religion?
Godwin: It's a very theoretical question but I always prefer simple practical question but still I will respond to that theoretical question. When you say other religion, it can include so many religions. So in religion where there is always some emphasis on meditation, there is always an emphasis on making the mind calm and making the mind still. In fact, in Christianity, there is this beautiful saying: Become still and be like God. So that in different religion, they may use different techniques but the principle is using those techniques to experience some calmness, some stillness, some spaciousness. Another similarity is that any tradition where there is meditation, there has to be an element of awareness, there has to be an element of knowing, understanding what is happening in the mind. So I would suggest that these two aspects are there in any spiritual tradition where there is meditation.
Anything else? I would like some practical questions relating to the technique.
Audience: How can I know what to do with the breathing and how to feel the effects of the breathing?
Godwin: You don't have to experience the effects of breathing. In fact when I give a guided meditation, I would try to suggest what has to be done. What has to be done is something very simple. Just feel what happens when the body is breathing. So using the sensations and the movements in the body, to be conscious, to be aware. So I would like to repeat that you don't have to do anything special. It is just being conscious of your in-breath and your out-breath.
Audience: When we are meditating, we may feel tired and sleepy. What should we do in that situation?
Godwin: Very good practical question. So one suggestion is, just open your eyes. Another is, it is interesting in the Buddhist text, it is emphasized to have your spine erect. So if you can have your spine erect, then to a great extent it is very difficult to feel sleepy or drowsy. Another suggestion is, I mean you are welcomed to stand up. So you can try some of these things and then I would say that they should immediately work. Anything else?
Audience: The first question is, in Chinese, we say that we have got only one mind and we cannot use one mind for two things at the same time. And during our daily life, we have to attend work and most of the time we are very busy, so how can we deal with our work and make friends with our breathing at the same time? And the second question is you said earlier that breathing is our best friend and is with us all the time even when we are sleeping, so when we have dreams or when we are in deep sleep, how can we take care of our breathing at that time?
Godwin: I'll start with the last question. What is interesting about our friend is that there are times when we can ignore it. Because when you are dreaming and when we are sleeping, to think of your breath, we have to have awareness and consciousness. Unless you are a very advance meditator, you can have some element of awareness while you are sleeping and dreaming, otherwise I mean who is the person who has awareness when you are sleeping and dreaming. So my response is, this is a situation where you can just leave our friend alone and he or she would not mind it at all. So the first question was that in everyday life we have to do different things. Now when we have to do different things, how can we do different things and still take care of our friend. As I said, to think of your friend, you have to stop your work. This is why I said when the traffic lights are red, when you are just doing nothing, just be conscious of your friend rather than be impatient about the red light. When you are having a particular emotion and when you are bothered about that emotion and at that moment, you will not be trying to do different things and at that moment, just come back to the breath. But still I like to respond, what we might try to do as meditators when we have to do different things. So here what happens is when we have to do different things, what can affect us is that we might have the idea: I have to do many things but it is possible I might make a mistake. Sometimes this is what creates the tension. As I said yesterday, in cultures where the emphasis is on doing things perfectly, rightly, you want to do always, everything rightly and perfectly. So I think in a way, in such situations, if you can just let go of this idea of perfection, this can be helpful. This is one suggestion.
Another interesting point is that although we have to do different things, we can, as you rightly said, do only one thing at a time. So that if we can learn to be conscious of whatever we are doing at a particular situation, then one can develop what is called moment to moment awareness in relation to what has to be done.
Maybe one last suggestion which can be very helpful is when you are working, when you have to do different things, as I said earlier, what is important is to become conscious of your state of mind. Are you anxious, are you stressful, are you insecure, are you relaxed? So it is very important for those who are really interested in everyday practice to constantly check out your state of mind. Whether you are working or whether you are not working, try to develop this practice of constant watching, awareness of what is happening in your mind. So when you have to do different things, after being aware of different things, just watch your state of mind. Is it reacting or is it responding? These are two very interesting words: reacting, responding. Responding is doing what is necessary without reacting. Reacting is getting anxious, getting fearful, getting stressed, tense and so on. So as you are still human and as you're still practicing, it is human that we will start to react in certain situations. So if you are able to be conscious even at the time you are reacting, at least later on, when there is space, where there is clarity, when you have recovered from that emotion, you can look back and find out: why did I react? Why couldn't I have responded to that situation? Then as I said yesterday, we learn from our mistakes, we can learn even from our reactions. So this kind of inquiry has to be done without giving yourself a minus. You do have to do this kind of enquiry in a very friendly, gentle, playful way. And then you can experiment with it, you say now tomorrow let me go and see how will I work. Will I react, will I respond? And in the reaction, how long will it last? So you are going with an open mind to see what is going to happen. These are very interesting, beautiful aspects of meditation, to see it as experimenting, experimenting with yourself. So when you try one experiment, you don't take up a position. So without taking up a position, you're just learning, finding out, exploring, experimenting. We can experiment, explore, learn from any situations.
So there's time for one last question please.
Audience: I am aware of myself being aware of the thoughts, then in that case, I cannot concentrate on my meditation, so what can I do?
Godwin: So the question is, if as I understood it correctly, if you are observing the thoughts, that is not meditation. If that is not meditation, what exactly was the question you didn't understand.
Interpreter: His question is when he meditates, he is aware of the passing thoughts and at that stage, he is O.K, he can still concentrate but when he is aware that he is aware of the passing thoughts, then that affects his concentration.
Godwin: So this is another point we have to remember, this word "concentration". Those who are listening to me carefully will remember I have not used the word "concentration" at all, but rather than "concentration", the words I use are "awareness", "mindfulness", "just knowing". I purposely avoid the word "concentration" because this is what is creating the vacuum. This is what is creating the suffering. So what I would suggest is, whatever is happening, if the mind is concentrated, just know that the mind is concentrated and when the mind is not concentrated, just know the mind is not concentrated. What is the problem? It is very important when we sit for meditation, not to have an expectation, an idea, a model of what should happen or what should not happen. In the Zen tradition, there is a beautiful word for it, to have the beginner's mind, or the "don't know" mind. And expectation is what creates suffering in our life. When we have expectations and when they do not correspond to our expectations, we are suffering in life and this is how suffering is created in meditation. It is very interesting. So when we meditate without having any expectation, you will just try to know what is happening from moment to moment. And it is very very important not to give pluses and minuses when we are meditating. So someone is expecting to concentrate and then when you think you are concentrated, you give yourself a big plus and holding on to the concentration and that's how tension is created. And when the mind is not concentrated, big minus. So in meditation also we are rating, giving pluses, giving minuses, giving pluses, giving minuses. This is what we are doing in ordinary life, so at least in meditation, please learn just to be open to whatever is happening.
So now I like to suggest that you take a small break and during the break, please make an effort to have mindfulness and when you move around, please make an effort to move slowly and with awareness so that you begin preparing your mind for the meditation. Please learn to walk slowly please.
[Break]
Godwin: Please sit in a relaxed position. It is very important to sit with a relaxed body. Please realize we are not going to do something special so you can just relax.
So let us spend some time with our body. Just feel the body. The different sensations, the different movements in your body.
If there are thoughts, just let go of the thoughts and come back to the body. So feeling the body is one thing, thinking about the body is another, please see the difference. Here, we are learning to feel our body.
Let us learn to feel friendly and gently and kind towards our body.
Let us now feel what it is to sit with our body completely still.
Now please allow the body to breath naturally.
No need to control our breath or to manipulate our breathing, not to manipulate our natural breathing.
Let us spend a few minutes just learning to allow the body to do what it likes.
Now just feel what happens in the body when the body is breathing, the different sensations, the different movements in the body when the body is breathing.
Do you feel any sensation in the area of the nostrils? Do you feel any sensation in the area of the chest? Do you feel the rise and the fall of the abdomen?
Experiencing the present moment with the help of the sensations and movements in your body because they are happening now.
When the body is inhaling you know that the body is inhaling. When the body is exhaling you know that the body is exhaling.
Not thinking about the past, not thinking about the future. Experiencing the joy of the present moment with the help of the in-breath and the out-breath.
Please do not try to stop thoughts or control thoughts.
If thoughts are there, just know you are having thoughts and come back to your friend, the breath.
Just feel relaxed with your breath.
Let us feel friendly and gentle towards our mind and body.
No pluses to what is happening, no minuses to what is happening. Just knowing whatever is happening.
Now please open your eyes slowly and when you change your posture, please do it slowly, consciously. And please don't think that the meditation is over. Just continue to know what is happening in the mind and body from moment to moment.
Now let us do some chanting. So when you are chanting, please have your body still and please don't make any noises because chanting itself is a meditation. Like using the breath to experience the present moment, using the chanting to experience the present moment and to create space in our mind through our chanting. I like to suggest not to look at the paper because these are simple words and you will be able to pick up the words.
[Chanting]
Day 5: 10th October 1997
Loving Kindness Meditation
Godwin:
I like to welcome you once again. As you know, the subject of the talk is meditation on loving kindness. The words "loving kindness" come from the Pali word "Metta". It is sometimes translated as loving kindness, as compassion and it literally means friendliness.
Loving Kindness Begins with Ourselves
It is psychologically very interesting that the meditation of loving kindness has to begin with oneself. So it is extremely important to learn to be friendly to oneself. The phrase I like to use is: learning to be your best friend in a most friendly way. To make this very important connection with ourself. Feel at ease with oneself. Feel at home with oneself. So to feel yourself as if you are coming home to yourself. So it is only when we make this connection with ourselves that we can really feel friendly to others. It is only then that we can really open our hearts to others. If we do not make this connection with ourselves, what happens is we start to hate ourselves, we start to dislike ourselves. It becomes a habit to give ourselves minuses. In this way, you learn to become your enemy in a way and this can create a lot of suffering for ourselves and also suffering for others. So this is one very important aspect of loving kindness, learning to be friendly to oneself, learning to open your heart to oneself and learning to open your heart to others. When I speak, with what I'm going to say, you can relate to yourself in your experience. Please make an effort to do that, then my talk will be a meditation by itself.
Forgiveness & Wounds in Our Heart
Another important aspect of loving kindness is using forgiveness. Human beings carry what I call "wounds". Wounds created by what you have done to others and wounds created by what others have done to you. I think everyone here, including myself, can relate to this. What happens with some human beings is they carry these wounds within themselves. So if you carry these wounds without healing them, again as I said earlier, we can create suffering for oneself, suffering to others, without knowing that the suffering is in relation to the wounds you have created. It can also affect our body in two ways. We can be having certain tensions in different parts of our body. It is related to these wounds, it is related to the repressed emotions. These wounds also can create certain illnesses. Another way it can affect us is that they can affect our sleep. Do we have fearful dreams, do we get angry in our dreams or be crying in our sleep? So another way it can affect us is that suddenly we can be affected by these emotions and we don't know why we are affected by these emotions. Suddenly we feel like crying. Suddenly there is fear. Suddenly there is sadness. And one cannot find the reason for it.
Another way it can affect us is that when we die the emotions, the wounds can come up. It is interesting to find out why at the time of death they should surface. While we are living, we may not look at them, we may repress them, we may push them away, but at the time that we die when our mind and body become weak, these wounds can surface. So it shows that we cannot live peacefully, we cannot sleep peacefully, we cannot die peacefully. Therefore it is extremely important to learn to heal these wounds. So meditation of loving kindness can help us to heal these wounds by learning to forgive ourselves and learning to forgive others. Forgive ourselves for realizing that we are only humans. Forgiving others by realizing that they are only humans. Also learning to let go of them by realizing that they happened in the past. We cannot change the past, so why should we carry the past as a burden to create more and more suffering for ourselves and others.
Make Friends with Unpleasant Situations
Another very important aspect of loving kindness is learning to use loving kindness to relate to unpleasant situations, unpleasant emotions when they are there. When we have unpleasant emotions, when we have physical pain, mental pain, we don't like them, we hate them, we dislike them, we resist them. In a way by doing that we give them more power, more energy. In such situations, we can use meditation on loving kindness by learning to make friends with these unpleasant situations. One very simple way of making friends with them is by learning to say to yourself: it is OK not to be OK (i.e. say OK to unpleasant situation).
See Positive Elements in Us
Another very important aspect of loving kindness is learning to see the positive elements in us, to see the goodness in us, to see the Buddha nature in us. One way of being our own enemy is seeing only our mistakes, seeing only the negative things, only giving minuses to ourselves. So it is extremely important to learn to see the positive elements in us, it is very important to learn to give pluses to ourselves, learning to see our goodness, learning to see our Buddha nature in us. And when we learn to do this, what happens is we see the positive elements in others, we learn to give more and more pluses to others, we see more and more the Buddha nature in others and then you come to a stage where you won't see a difference between yourself and others.
Be Kind to Others
Another very important aspect of loving kindness is learning to do kind things, learning to do compassionate things for others. When you develop more and more loving kindness within yourselves, then naturally your actions, your speech, your words are related to the positive aspect of loving kindness. And when we learn to be friendly to others, when we learn to be kind to others, when you learn to feel for others, this can also give lots of joy and happiness because when you see others happy because of your own actions, this can bring lots of joy, lots of lightness in ourselves.
But Not Allow Others to Exploit You
Having loving kindness is not allowing others to exploit you, not allowing others to do what they like to do. It is very very important to learn that there are times when we have to assert ourselves, when we have to learn to be firm with others. In this connection, I like to relate a story that I like very much and relating on the story I will end my talk.
The story is about a cobra who was practising loving kindness. So there was this cobra in a forest practising loving kindness saying: may all beings be well, may all beings be happy, may all beings be free of suffering. There was an old woman who could not see properly. She was collecting fire wood and she saw the cobra, she thought it was a rope. She used the "rope" to bundle the fire wood she had collected. As the cobra was practising loving kindness, the cobra allowed the old woman to do this. The old woman carried the bundle of fire wood home. Then the cobra escaped with some difficulties, with lots of pain, with lots of wounds in the body. And the cobra went to meet the cobra's master. So the cobra told the master, ‘See what has happened. I adopt your loving kindness. See the wounds, see the pain that I'm experiencing in my body.’ So the master very calmly, gently told the cobra, ‘You have not been practising loving kindness, you have been practising foolish loving kindness. You should have just shown, hissed, that you are a snake, you are a cobra.’ So it is very important that in everyday life we also have to learn what the cobra should learn.
So now it is time for questions. Any questions relating to loving kindness, specially in everyday life, any difficulties, problems you have.
Q&A
Audience: Master, if we practise in giving ourselves all the pluses, all the good sides in ourselves, where is the line to be drawn?
Godwin: When we have got used to giving minus, when we have got used to seeing the unpleasant elements in us, when we are relating to ourselves as an enemy, how do we work with this situation? So this is the important issue. So in such situation, just to realize: I'm only giving minuses to myself, aren't there good things that I've done? So we are learning to also see the good things factually, objectively, without of course being conceited about it but simply as a fact. So we learn to see the goodness, we learn to see the positive side so you see, learning to see things as they are as the Buddha said. This is the important thing. Then as I also said, we learn to see the goodness in others which also helps us to appreciate. Also when we see goodness in others, learning to be happy when you see goodness in others. So in this way, you learn very important spiritual qualities which are helping our practice.
I like to ask a question and I ask this whenever I visit a country. Which is easier to do: to forgive oneself or to forgive others? So please reflect on yourself and give an answer from your heart.
Audience: It's not easy to forgive oneself.
Godwin: Does everyone agree?
Audience: No.
(By show of hands, audience indicated who considered it easier to forgive oneself and who considered it easier to forgive others).
Godwin: Thank you. What does it indicate? It indicates in a way those who find it difficult to forgive themselves, it means that they are very hard on themselves. So they are too stone-hearted on themselves to say: I don't deserve to be forgiven. And then others who find it difficult to forgive others, they can be very very hard on others. So you see the importance of developing softness, you realize the importance of being gentle, you feel the importance of feeling tender to oneself and to others. So when you develop these qualities, naturally, you can forgive yourself and you can forgive others. So as I said, what we have to learn and I think it is extremely important, is to learn to accept our humanness, learn to accept we are imperfect human beings, that we still have shortcomings. In the same say, we have to realize that we are living in a world where people are imperfect, where people are humans, so you're bound to see the shortcomings, human frailties arising from others and from yourself. So according to the Buddha's teaching, we have greed, we have hatred, we have delusion in us and in others. So because of greed, hatred and delusion, we shall have shortcomings and make mistakes. Only someone who are completely enlightened will not have these shortcomings but as long as we are not enlightened, we are human, we are imperfect. So I feel that it is extremely important to learn to realize this, to accept this and learn to forgive ourselves and to forgive others and then when you can see in these terms, as I said, you will be able to forgive yourself and forgive others.
Any questions?
Audience: Due to the impermanence in life, there are all kinds of suffering. What can we do about it?
Godwin: Actually I would like to discuss only loving kindness because it is the subject that we are discussing. So I will give a very brief response to the question of impermanence. We suffer from impermanence because we don't accept impermanence, we don't accept change. We will take one example. We are healthy and then because of the law of impermanence or the law of change, we become sick. So we suffer because we have expectations: I should not fall sick. So in this way, when we have this resistance to change, to impermanence, there will be suffering so the way out is to be open to change, to be open to impermanence, to accept that as a fact of life. So this is where again the Buddha said: Learning to accept things just as they are, and not as they should or should not be.
Audience: You said we should learn to love this friend, but when we see the bad thoughts or bad desires in us, how can we love this friend when this friend is so bad? Isn't that like covering ourselves in a way?
Godwin: Very good question. We again take a couple of practical examples. Take the example of anger, when we get angry, what happens? We are angry about our anger. We start sometimes, hating ourselves because we are getting angry and then we suffer from guilt because we have got angry. So because of this anger and because you are relating to this in this way, you can suffer for days. So in using loving kindness you relate to the anger in an entirely different way. So rather than beat yourself, rather than giving yourself a minus, rather than suffering and feeling guilty, in a very friendly gentle way, as I have been saying so often, you'll find out: How did I get angry? So as I have been saying a few times, we can learn from that anger, we can use that anger for our spiritual growth. This is what I mean by being friendly. The way I'm suggesting helps us to work with the anger in an entirely different way, rather than giving in to them. It's not really pampering ourselves, but by learning to work with the anger in a different way, in a more effective way rather than suffering too much as a result of that anger. And another point is, when you are friendly to yourself and when you are open to yourself, you'll be also realizing when you're not angry, which is also very important. So then we come to a stage when we are livid, we know what to do with the anger and when we are not angry, we know we are not angry.
Any other question?
Audience: Learning to practise forgiveness is easier to say than to do specially when it comes to people who are close to you like parents, very very good friends, brothers and sisters. It is very difficult to forgive them. When it comes to friends who are not so close to you, not so friendly, then it's easier to forgive them. What can we do?
Godwin: Very interesting question which I think all of us can relate to. It is interesting actually to reflect why with people to whom we are close that they can create wounds. The simple reason is because they are close to us, maybe friends, relations, then we have an image expecting how they should behave. A good simile to understand this is that we put them on a pedestal by saying he's my best friend, so therefore my best friend should behave this way. She's my mother so therefore she should behave this way. So you see the demands we are making from them because they are close to us and poor people, they fall from the pedestal that you have put them on, and when they fall from the pedestal we don't realize that we are the persons who put them on a pedestal and we get disappointed, we suffer. And someone can carry these wounds throughout one's life. So one should really see what it does to yourself because of your ideas about how others should behave. To put the same thing another way, we forget that they are also humans.
There is time for one last question.
Audience: Do you mean we should not have any expectations of others or should we not be attached to people?
Godwin: I think it is natural that we have expectations but what we forget is how far our expectations are realistic. How far are you prepared to meet up with your expectations about yourself? How far others can meet up with your expectations? How realistic are your expectations? This is what one has to be clear about. I know some people who are very idealistic. Very idealistic about themselves, very idealistic about others and they live in a very idealistic world. This idealistic world that we have created is one thing and what we are realizing is another thing. So as one has to hold into this idealistic world, as long as we hold onto this perfect world, we are bound to create wounds in relation to your own behaviour and in relation to the behaviour of others. According to the Buddha, until and unless we are enlightened, we are all crazy. Crazy in the sense that we can't see things as they are. The problem with us is we take this crazy world seriously. And also a reminder of a very interesting saying in Tibetan Buddhism: Enlightened people behave like ordinary people. Ordinary people try to be like enlightened people.
I'm very happy that you asked very good practical questions on loving kindness. So now we take a small break and after the break, we will be having a meditation on loving kindness. So during the break I would suggest to please use a few minutes just to learn to be friendly to:
Learning to open your heart like opening a flower.
And can you feel yourself as your best friend?
Can you really feel it, feel it in every part of your body, your whole being?
Feeling yourself as your best friend, can you really say these words with some feeling: May I be well?
Really wishing yourself, that you will be well physically and mentally.
May I be happy. Feel happy that you are learning to do meditation of loving kindness.
May I be peaceful. Can you really feel the peace and the stillness in this room?
Feel the peace in every part of the body.
Let us now look at our wounds. Look to the wounds in relation to what you have done to others, we try to forgive us by feeling that you are your best friend, by accepting we are humans. And those who do not have such wounds, feel happy that you do not have such wounds.
You can feel the area of your heart and say to yourself: I forgive myself. I forgive myself.
Those who have wounds in relation to what others have done to them, let us think of them and forgive them. Those who don't have such wounds, feel happy that you don't have such wounds.
I forgive you. Forgiving you, may you be well, may you be happy, may you be free of suffering.
Can we really say these words from our heart?
When we are leaving our wounds, may we experience more joy, more lightness, more friendliness.
I understand this is a day for ancestors, let us think of the ancestors and especially our parents whether they are alive or whether they are dead.
Can we live with thoughts of loving kindness to our parents?
Can we feel grateful to our parents?
[End of meditation]
Let us do some chanting. I'm happy that the chanting is improving every day, both the Pali chanting and the Chinese chanting.
[Chanting]
Day 6: 11th October 1997
Meditation and Emotions
Godwin:
I would like to once again welcome you.
The subject of today's talk is about emotions. What can be described as unpleasant emotions which create our suffering. We can consider some such emotions: anger, fear, anxiety, sadness, loneliness, feeling of guilt, jealousy. I think everyone here can relate to these emotions. I think no one here has not really experienced them. And I think everywhere in the world these emotions that I mentioned, people go through them.
So it is actually these emotions which create our suffering, which create conflict in us. So it is very important to find out how meditation helps us to work with these emotions. So I hope to present some tools to work with them. Some of these tools you might have heard me mentioning before.
Be Open to Unpleasant Emotions
So what is the first tool? The first tool is very difficult in a way, as I have been saying a few times, is learning to be open to these unpleasant emotions. It is a very strong conditioning not to like them, in a way to hate them, to dislike them and so on, because they are unpleasant when we experience them. So as I said, it is very important to learn to be open to them, to learn to be friendly towards them. So we have to learn to do this gradually, gently, tenderly in our practice.
Learning About Emotions
The next tool is learning to explore, investigate, discover, make an effort to learn about them. Because we don't like them, because we hate them, we never make an effort to learn about them, to discover about them. We can learn a great deal about these emotions. One thing that we can learn is to see the connection between thoughts and emotions. So we see how emotions are created, and when we understand and see how emotions are created, to a great extent, we can work with them, handle them. And when we are prepared to learn about them, discover about them, then we learn to be open to them as I said earlier.
Invite Unpleasant Emotions
Another interesting tool related to this is that when we don't have these emotions, invite them and allow them to come. It is very very interesting that when we invite them, they don't come. Because when we fear them, when we don't like them, we give them more power and more energy. So when we are open, when we invite them, the power and energy we have given is taken away. Maybe today when we are meditating, we will invite the monsters that we don't like.
Knowing the Absence of Unpleasant Emotions
Another very important tool is when these unpleasant emotions are not there, to know that they are not there. As I said, as we have given them power and as we don't like them, what happens is, we are afraid of them and by being afraid of them, when they are absent, we hardly know that they are absent. So by knowing when they are absent, we learn to be more and more positive. To give a practical example, when we have a toothache, we really suffer from the toothache but when we don't have a toothache, do we ever say ‘Wow! I don't have a toothache’? Even when we don't have a toothache, we think maybe it will come tomorrow. So it is too good to believe that they can be absent. So I would like to emphasize this tool very much, that when these unpleasant emotions are not there, just to know that they are not there. Maybe now you may not be having these unpleasant emotions, so please know that they are not there now.
Unpleasant Emotions Are Visitors Who Don’t Belong to Us
Another very deep tool is to realize they don't really belong to us. We have a sense of ownership even with these emotions. So when there is anger, you think it is my anger. When there is fear, you think it is my fear. So as you know, what we consider "mine" which we think we own, we don't like to let go. This point is presented in the Dhamma in a very interesting way which means learning to relate to these emotions as our visitors, as our guests. So we have to be a very friendly good host and we can really learn from the visitors who come. We should realize that these visitors come, and they stay and they go away. So when they come, we must say, ‘Welcome, please come, it's nice to have you here, how long will you be staying? It would be interesting to see how long you are going to stay.’ And when they leave you say, ‘Goodbye, welcome to come again.’ Isn't it a beautiful way of relating to our visitors? So there is a kind of playfulness, light heartiness, joy, if you can relate to these emotions in this way.
Experience Emotions without Words
Maybe one more tool is when we experience these emotions, we have given them words. So sometimes we are conditioned by the words themselves. So a very interesting tool is when these emotions come, to relate to them, to experience them without the word. Take away the word and see what actually you are experiencing. So that by giving a word we relate to it from the past but when we take away the word, you are really experiencing it from moment to moment. We are really being present with the emotion.
Summary of Tools
So let me go over the tools that I presented. So the first one is learning to be open to them. The next one is to make an effort to learn about them, to experiment about them. Another tool is when they are not there, to invite them. Another is when they are absent, just to know that they are absent. Another is to relate to them without a sense of ownership, just to see them as visitors who come and go. Another is to take away the word and really see what actually you are experiencing.
Develop Self-confidence
Now what is important is when you have discovered these tools and when you know that they work, you develop lot of self- confidence about handling these emotions. The biggest problem is that we don't have self-confidence and when we don't have self-confidence, in a way we are already defeated, we have already become victims of them. So when you have self-confidence, then you become open to them, then you come to a stage whether these emotions are there or not there make no difference.
See Emotions Just as They Are
Now what happens is when we have pleasant states of mind, pleasant emotions, we like them, we give them a big plus. And when we try to hold onto them and when we cannot succeed, then again, suffering. And when there is unpleasant emotions, as I said, we don't like them, so we give them a minus. So can we relate to these states of mind without a plus, without a minus, just learning to see them just as they are.
Now if you have any questions, please ask them, specially practical questions relating to the tools and maybe your own experience in working with them.
Q&A
Audience: When there is emotion in general which appears in the mind, there is not much problem, we can deal with it with the tools that you told us before. However, if there are big wounds in our heart and when these wounds come out, great emotions develop, then naturally we react to them and we become nervous and sad. So are there any other tools we can make use of in order to deal with this sort of big emotion as opposed to general emotions.
Godwin: Can you give an example of what you have in mind?
Audience: It could be wounds which hurt many years ago or many lifetimes ago. It's just like a rat being pricked by needles.
Godwin: Yeah. When I spoke about loving kindness yesterday I spent lot of time telling you how to heal these wounds. So I don't like to repeat them but just to remind you that when you have these wounds, if it is wounds in relation to what you have done to others, it is just learning to forgive yourself, accepting your humanness, accepting your imperfections. And if it is wounds in relation to what others have done to you, it is again forgiving them by realizing their humanness, their imperfections.
Anything else please.
Audience: Recently, something happened to me and I watched my own emotions and it was very funny. It was like some very good cold water running through my heart, and it was a very big disappointment at the time, but after observing that I survived quickly. And my question is whether it is true that emotions have more to do with the heart and thoughts have more to do with the brain.
Godwin: I think it doesn't matter, my dear friend, whether it's in the brain or the heart. These are theoretical questions. We have to be very simple. In using the tools, we have to have a very simple, practical, direct approach. This is the beauty of the Buddha's teaching. I would like to repeat these words, it is very simple, very practical, it is very direct.
Anything else please.
Audience: You said earlier that we should not give words to emotions. So how do we observe the emotions?
Godwin: Very good practical question. I like such questions. Suppose you are experiencing boredom. So you take away the word boredom and find out what you are actually experiencing. Is it a sensation that you are calling boredom? Is it a particular thought that you are considering as boredom? Is it a particular feeling which you have categorized as boredom? So when we can find out like this, boredom can become very interesting.
Audience: Master, my question is: all human beings have many bad habits like gambling, womanizing, drinking, smoking. How do we handle these bad habits?
Godwin: Very interesting list. Actually, one of the aspects of meditation is working with habits. What has happened to us is that we have become dependent on these habits. So what happens is that we respond to these habits in a very very mechanical way. The word comes and then we just give in to them. So one suggestion I like to offer is, again this is very important in the practice of awareness, just to know when these habits arise, to be conscious of them, to be aware of them so at least we can work with the mechanical aspect of these habits. The second suggestion I like to offer is to see for yourself how it creates suffering for yourself, how it can create suffering for others and does it give you joy, lightness and positive spiritual qualities?
The third suggestion is when you are not experiencing these things, when you have not given in to these habits, just to see the difference when they are absent in your mind. Then you see in your own experience when they are present what it does to you and when they are absent what it does to you. So then they will naturally drop away on their own. And as I said earlier, it is also very important to develop self-confidence: I know I have these habits but let me make a real effort to work with them. To make a real commitment, dedication, devotion. To work with these habits can be something very very useful.
And maybe the last suggestion. It is helpful to associate with spiritual friends, noble friends. And it is helpful to share your experiences with them and they can be also very very supportive in the spiritual path you are following.
One last suggestion is please don't feel guilty, don't feel bad, don't consider yourself as a sinner because you are doing these things. Don't see them as problems but see them as a challenge that you need to work with.
Audience: We shouldn't put words to our emotions but if I have anger and I put it down and I'm suppose to observe it but when I do not have emotion how can I observe without emotion?
Godwin: Supposing we are working with anger. I think anger is a common emotion that we can all relate to. So then when we don't have anger, just to know: Ah, I don't have anger now. You can take your mind backwards and say, the whole of this morning I did not get angry. At the end of the day you might say : Oh, today, the whole day I was free of anger. You'll be surprised what a good person you have been and then you'll feel more and more positive about this.
Audience: With emotions, it's never too late to revenge. Sometimes you can put it down and forgive but it arises again, so what can you do about it?
Godwin: Good question. Because again we can relate to such experience. So I like to offer some suggestions how to work with such situations. The first suggestion is: don't be surprised. This is the way with emotions, sometimes they don't come, and then sometimes they come. So when they come, please don't be surprised. When emotions go, we come to the conclusion "now it is all over". So the problems is with our conclusion that they should not come. The second suggestion is, I mean I can go over the tools again so when they arise again, to be aware of them and to use different tools but without giving yourself a minus. This is what is important. But arising from that question I like to emphasize something very very important which is that we should not, as I said, come to the conclusion that I will not be having these emotions again, but rather when they come, if you can feel grateful for them, if you can see them as an opportunity, if you can learn from them, then as I said earlier, you come to a state: where whether they come or whether they don't come makes no difference. So that is what we should try to aim at rather than have this conclusion: Now they are over. According to the Buddhist teachings, these things completely stop only when we have become enlightened. So as I said yesterday, we are trying to be enlightened people even before we are enlightened. This brings up a point that I have been emphasizing very much in my lectures: Learning to accept our humanness, learning to accept our imperfections. It is very very important in our practice.
No more questions? Are all your questions and problems solved?
Audience: I want to know how to deal with sadness. Sometimes one just can't let go because you would even feel it in your dreams particularly when relatives pass away.
Godwin: I don't want to go over the tools again. I like to repeat that whether it is sadness, whether it is fear, whether it is anxiety, whether it is guilt, it is the same medicine. So about dreams, it shows that the sadness has become fairly deep that it even comes up in a dream. So please remember, please be open to the days when you don't dream about sadness. When the sadness is not there, just to be open that the sadness is not there.
There might be two types of sadness. One type of sadness is in relation to a particular incident. There may be another type of sadness which is not related to an incident but then you just generally feel sadness. So if it is related to a particular incident, that incident should become an object of meditation. To see clearly that that incident has been created by your expectations of how things should have been. And if it is just sadness that comes without a reason, what you might try to do is one thing, is to feel the sensations in the body while you are experiencing the sadness because with sadness, sometimes our thoughts can make it worse. So if you can be with the sensations, this may be helpful.
Another tool as I have been mentioning a few times is to come back to your breath because it is happening now. And it is interesting that all sadness is in relation to the past. Sadness is in relation to the past and anxiety is in relation to the future. So making a connection with your breath and learning to be in the present helps us to handle the past and the future. So by doing that, we learn to handle these emotions which are always related to the past and the future. And in conclusion I like to again mention in one of the tools that I referred to earlier, when sadness is not there, try to invite sadness and you might find that it may not come.
Time for one last question.
Audience: Your advice is that we should not label emotions with words and you already told us that if there is no anger, just to know there is no anger but when we say there is no anger, we are putting words to describe a certain experience, so isn't that contradictory?
Godwin: Very good question. I like that question. So if you consider the tools, you'll see sometimes we need to use words, sometimes we don't have to use words. So this is why there is a variety of tools, so if one works, if one doesn't work, you can experiment with the others. So what is important is you have to find out which tools are really helping you. So once you discover the tools that are helping you, you have to use them. It's interesting that these tools are related to each individual. We human beings have different conditions, different personalities. This is why I have been trying to present tools where it can cover all types of human beings. So the last point I want to make is that it is very very important in the spiritual path, in the meditation, for you to experiment, for you to find out for your own self. The Buddha emphasized this very much, to be self reliant, to be your own teacher, to be your light to yourself.
So now let us take a small break and during this break I like to suggest that you reflect on some of the tools that I mentioned and then discover for yourself what emotions are bothering you. So it is very very important to learn to reflect on such themes. The reflection is thinking about a particular theme and when you think about it, if other thoughts come, you should learn to let go of that and come back to the theme that you are really reflecting on. So I like you to do this. It doesn't matter whether you are walking but whatever you are doing, just to learn to develop this important meditation of reflecting. And when you hear the bell, please come back.
[Break]
So let us do meditation relating to what we have been discussing. Those who have problems with unpleasant emotions, please allow them to arise now. So if these emotions that you don't like arise, let us see how far we can make friends with them. Let us see how far we can just allow them, just let them be. Just to relate to them as a visitor who has come. And if you don't have any unpleasant emotions, just to know that you don't have any unpleasant emotions.
Can we learn to relate to them without giving them a minus.
Can you really say to yourself, it is O.K not to feel O.K.
Can you feel grateful that this emotion is there so that you can learn to work with it.
Can you now feel confidence, self-confidence that if they come again, you know how to work with them, you know how to handle them.
Now please open your eyes.
[End of meditation]
We can do some nice chanting now.
Actually chanting is also a very powerful tool to work with emotions, especially if you can be completely in the present while you are chanting. Please see for yourself how chanting will help you. It will help you to create space in your mind.
[Chanting]
Day 7: 12th October 1997
Meditation in Everyday Life
Godwin:
I like to welcome you to this one day meditation. I like to offer some suggestions about the practice today.
Feeling Happy
The first suggestion I like to offer is that every one of you should feel happy that you are able to come here. Today is a holiday and after working very hard for some days, the fact that you have decided to come, you should really feel happy about yourself. Usually we feel bad about ourselves but it is also very important to feel good about ourselves. So I like to emphasize this point, just to feel good about yourself that you are able to come here for meditation.
Feeling Grateful
The next suggestion is try to feel grateful that you are able to come. I know some who want to come today but for different reasons they are unable to come. You should feel grateful that you are able to come and that you are here, present.
Quality of "Just Knowing"
As I have been saying, in meditation a very very important aspect is the practice of awareness, mindfulness, just knowing what is happening. So in this one day meditation, we will try to develop this very important quality of just knowing whatever is happening in our mind and body from moment to moment as far as we can. And even if it is unpleasant experience, even if it is something you consider strange, just to know that it is happening rather than be worried: Am I doing it rightly? Is it normal to experience these things? It is not necessary to have such thoughts but just knowing that this is what I am feeling, this is the sensation I am experiencing.
Loving Kindness
Another important aspect related to this is to be mindful, to be aware with loving kindness, just knowing what is happening with friendliness. It can be like a mother who is just watching, observing her only child with friendliness. So let us learn today to watch, to observe, to find out, just to know what is happening in our mind and body like a mother watching her only child, with friendliness, with gentleness, with openness.
Learn to Slow Down
Related to mindfulness is another suggestion I like to offer, is let us learn to slow down today. I know in Hong Kong you have to move very fast because the speed here is very fast. Today we will make it a point to learn to relax and just to do things very slowly. Slowly and also in a very relaxed way.
Practice of Silence
Another suggestion I like to offer is the practice of silence. I know it is very difficult for some people to be silent because it is a very very strong habit that we have. So today let us make an effort just to be silent with ourselves and you will see a connection between awareness, mindfulness, and silence. The more aware you are, the more silent you become and the more silent you become, mindfulness will come naturally. You'll enjoy the space that silence creates in your mind.
Learn to Be Alone with Ourselves
Another aspect of silence is learning to be alone with ourselves. So today, please try to be silent and just being alone with yourselves. As I said in one occasion in one of the talks, we have become so dependent on external things, so today we will try just to be friendly and to see whether we can be in our own company and enjoy our own company. Learning to be our best friend. So it is very very important to make this connection with ourselves where we see ourselves as our best friend, the most precious friend we have, we try to make a connection with oneself.
Develop Self-confidence
So today there will be some group discussions. So any problems, any difficulties you have, we can discuss the problems or difficulties you may be experiencing but still it is very very important in meditation to be self reliant, to have our own methods. The Buddha said self-effort is the best effort and being self-reliant. Another very important suggestion I like to offer is that we will try to develop self-confidence today. To have self-confidence that you can handle whatever is arising in your mind and body. In meditation, this is very very important, to have this self-reliance, to have this self-confidence, just to know what is happening in the mind and the body and then learning from them, being open to them. So today we will try to be like children, trying to learn, making discoveries about what is happening in our mind and body. It is very very important to have this childlike quality and learning, finding out, being curious about what are happening in our mind and body, which are something we take for granted. So see meditation as a voyage of self discovery and if you can have this openness, then we can learn from any experience we are having today. As I said, it can be pleasant, it can be unpleasant but learning to ask the questions: What I can learn from this? What does it show to me? And so this kind of attitude to meditation is very very important.
Don’t Expect to Achieve Something Special
One last suggestion is: please do not have much expectation that you are going to achieve something very special. Meditation is nothing special. It's just being open to ordinary things. It's nothing extraordinary. Please remember that. Please realize that. This is something beautiful about meditation. So it is not results that we are going to achieve but the practice itself, that is the result, knowing what is happening is the result, not what comes after. Please remember this. Maybe in this culture there is lots of emphasis on being goal oriented, of achieving result. So in meditation, the result is the practice. This is what is very very interesting about the meditation. So the result is just being open, knowing what is happening from moment to moment. So you are experiencing every moment.
These are some very practical suggestions I like to offer you for today. So as you can see from the program, there is yoga, there is walking meditation, there is standing meditation, there is group discussion, chanting, there will be so many things happening today. So let see everything as part of the practice. Even when we have lunch, let us learn to make it part of the practice. I will tell you how to eat our lunch with a meditative mind.
Sitting Meditation
Let us now do our sitting meditation. So those who like to stand and move your body before the sitting, you are free to do that.
Now please sit in a comfortable position
Now please close your eyes and please spend some time just learning to relax yourself, just to relax your body. Just to feel comfortable with yourself.
Now please spend some time feeling happy you are meditating now. Feeling good about what you are trying to learn.
Now what you are going to do in the present meditation is something very very simple. So until you hear the bell, just know from moment to moment what you are hearing, the thoughts that you are having, the sensations you are experiencing in the body. So it is something very simple that everyone can do. What is important is to be alert, to be awake, to be present, to be alive from moment to moment.
If anyone becomes sleepy and drowsy, please open your eyes.
We hear sounds, we have thoughts, we experience sensations, we may be having emotions, just knowing from moment to moment all these things that are happening. Making friends with them, learning to say O.K to them.
If you are having any unpleasant sensations in the body, just be open to them, make friends with them, just to be aware of them.
It's like learning to say O.K to the noises that you are hearing.
Do you know each thought that arises and passes away in your mind ?
(Bell)
Please open your eyes and when you change your posture, just know you are doing that and feel the different sensations in the body. So please continue to know what is happening in your mind and body from moment to moment.
One can meditate in four postures, sitting, standing, walking, lying down. So today we will be trying to practise in three postures, sitting, standing, walking.
Standing Meditation
Now let us do some standing meditation for some time. Please stand slowly, knowing that you are going to stand and observing the intention to stand. Now just feel what it is to stand. Feel the different sensations, the different movements in your body. If you are experiencing any unpleasant sensations, painful sensations in the body just to know them and just to be open to them, just to say OK to them. And if you are experiencing any pleasant sensations in the body, just to know that you are having pleasant sensations.
Try to feel every part of your body, the different sensations, the different movements in your body. And learn to feel friendly, gentle and kind to your body. And when thoughts come, learn to let go of them and come back to the body. So please use your body to experience the present moment, the here and the now.
Please learn to feel the body rather than think about the body, please see the difference.
And just feel what it is to stand completely still.
Learn to gently let go of the thought and come back to your body. To be in the present with the help of your body, the feelings, the sensations, the different movements.
Finding the sensations and the feelings in the body more interesting than your thoughts.
(Bell)
Walking Meditation
Now we will be doing some walking meditation. So the idea of walking meditation is again, conscious walking. So you can walk slowly and just being mindful of your walking. So when you walk, you have to feel the different sensations in the body while you are walking. The thoughts will come but please learn to let go of the thoughts and come back to the present, that is walking. So now we have to organize how we can do walking meditation. I would suggest that we can do it in two groups. One group can walk on the stage and the other group can walk here. So the two groups can get into two circles following one after the other. And while you are walking I will try to offer some suggestions about the practice.
Whatever you are doing, please do it slowly, consciously with mindfulness.
So please walk slowly, consciously. Feeling the sensations in your feet. Using walking to experience the present moment.
Please have your hands in front, folded.
Please walk slowly so that you can be conscious of all the movements, the sensations in your body when you are walking. So let go of your thoughts and come back to the present with the help of walking. Just walking in a very relaxed way.
Learning to enjoy the simple act of walking.
Please look at the feet of the person in front.
Please look at the feet of the person in front without looking everywhere.
When you are lifting your feet you know that you are lifting your feet.
Just feel the earth with your feet.
Learning to relax with your walking.
Learning to walk consciously.
Can you walk as if you are walking on lotus flowers, gently, tenderly.
Being conscious of each step.
(Bell)
Now please stand wherever you are.
Now please stand completely still with your eyes closed.
You can use the sound to experience the present moment.
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