Contacting Vedana (Nondual Meditation)

hey everybody welcome to tonight's class this is me all alone in the SF DC space the San Francisco Dharma collective space and obviously we took the decision to shut down the in-person part of class tonight because of the kovat 19 concerns and I think that's just reasonable you know we want to make sure everyone stays healthy if possible and and at the same time it's so sad to be sitting here in this room tonight on Thursday night my favorite night and it's my favorite night because I get to hang out with all my friends at the Dharma collective and talk and meditate and meet and have a great time and it's just me alone in here right now in the door's locked I hear some poor folks at least one poor person banging on the door over there I'm sorry but I have a big plague you know doctor sign and I in the door so no class in person tonight and I think unless I'm mistaken no classes in person at all for a while here we will try to certainly for my classes we will try to livestream them all so you can watch them from home and there'll be no interruption in the teaching from SF DC but but we won't be here in person and so I'm you could hear a baby I'm speaking speaking to this echo II empty room of empty chairs and imagining you all out there in YouTube land so if the if the sound is bad or the shot isn't lined up or whatever sorry it's just me I had to line it up on what I thought would be where I would be sitting and make it sound like I thought it would sound so this is the best I could do on my own it takes a Sangha to run a YouTube streaming channel okay so all that lecturing aside we're going to now do our typical hour-long guided meditation so whether you're you know in your car or you know on your couch or maybe locked in a bathroom somewhere whatever please make ready to meditate there's this funny feature where the light is coming down and from the front and if I put the camera right in front it blocks the light so I have it off to the right so I have to turn everyone smile to look right into the camera but I'll also be speaking to the invisible audience in the chair right in front of me everyone's well as well okay let's begin so as usual we're gonna start with sha Mita so this is focused relaxation and even though we're not together in a room and even though you may be alone as usual I'd like you to sit very very still the main purpose of the sitting still is to help still the mind as we settle into a very very still body as it gets incredibly relaxed and still the mind starts to settle and a certain kind of seclusion what's called seclusion or sort of containment or collectiveness of the mind is noticeable and keeping the body relatively still really helps with that and by relatively still I mean you know you can breathe obviously and maybe shift position slightly but moving your arms or legs at all will tend to break that seclusion and so even though you're home alone and you and perhaps and you and you're not gonna bother anybody with noisy rustling and shuffling still for the benefit of your own practice try to become as relaxed and motionless as possible and as usual we're just hanging out with the breath but more specifically the pleasurable sensations of the breath in the body so whether it's just for some of you you know the breath of the nose or maybe the breath in the entire body or just certain areas of the body we're contacting the sensation of the breath and feeling the pleasantness of that settling into the pleasantness of that kind of experimenting and playing with the pleasantness of that this is shemitah not the pasta so we're actually aiming for it to be pleasant we want it to be soft and gentle open and then sometimes you know the pleasantness of the breath can get rare rather large so it might be kind of a big buzzy tingly pleasantness but either way it's a kind of joyous and easy settling in to simply being with breathing some people like to have other focus objects so it could be a mantra it could be visualization and I like using visualization like just picturing let's say a bright circle or something in the mind's eye that takes quite a bit of concentration for some folks certainly it's not the easiest focus object but it definitely if you get something more difficult like that you know mentally produced object rather than a physical sensation if you get a mentally produced object clear in your mind and stable the concentration is quite intense and when I say intense I don't mean that it's tight or difficult or any of that we're still feeling Pleasant we're still feeling open and easy and relaxed so let's just sit with that now any place that feels tight in your body just see if you can intend that that relaxed just allowing and releasing an opening and dropping any tension in your eyes or face or jaw let that go if you can feeling how is the face relaxes the eyes especially relaxed and the jaw is not clenched already that brings quite a bit more relaxation to the entire body because all our all the sense organs in our head are not on a high alert ready to take action and ready to see what's going on instead they're relaxed and kind of at rest and so that causes a down regulation of the whole system we start to just become soothed and open allow also your throat and neck to release when you release your throat it lowers your voice but that I become inaudible if I lower my voice like that so I well out of my great compassion tighten up my voice a little bit to try to make it louder and easier to hear also allow your shoulders your neck and shoulders to relax kind of going down and the shoulders floating back and open remember you want that lower back from the tailbone to kind of the top of your pelvis to tilt in so the rest of your back curves properly and points straight up basically points upward yeah aside from that one bit of tension to keep your spine upright like your arms elbows forearms wrists hands and fingers to release relax and let go tonight you can make them either as limp as wet noodles or as limp as wet rags or for those of you who are more CE oriented you can have them be as limp as seaweed wet seaweed in any case they're incredibly limp no tension at all in the arms and hands and you want them to feel so relaxed so still that there's just no possibility of moving them it's not a tight kind of motionlessness it's an extremely relaxed kind of motionless mists like a wet a sandbag it's just very heavy and very relaxed and feel how again instead of keeping the arms ready for doing ready for taking action and ready for defending ourselves ready for feeding ourselves or whatever instead there in a way turned off and put aside so that we're signalling again to the entire system that this is not a time for activity not a time for doing not a time for scanning the environment for threats but rather simply a time to relax and focus and feel ease see if you can notice the very pleasant sensations of breathing sometimes the breath right up in the inside of the nose feels quite good or the back of the throat sometimes the feeling in the center of the chest feels there's kind of a kind of a buzzy tingly nasaan the chest with breathing's very pleasant or for me the diaphragm is always really lit up when I'm breathing like this it's very bright very positive sensation there and speaking of the diaphragm see if you can let that relax even though it's working to keep you breathing it doesn't need to have any extra tension or unnecessary tightness or kind of like clenching so see if you can release the diaphragm and breathing with a nice deep belly breaths will help you to do that when relaxing the legs and the feet the lower abdomen I mean just feeling the whole body whole body relax the whole body open the whole body feeling well-being and pleasure the whole body feeling wholeness and completeness and a kind of Pleasant containment keeping still in meditation is serves in a way some of the same functions as having a weighted blanket like a heavy heavy blanket or heavy pillows that provide this kind of containment a sense of being held and you know you can imagine this baby that is not feeling good or is upset or whatever it's kind of struggling and you know moving around and trying to get comfortable and then once it's held by its mother or father or other caregiver baby is held it gets very very still and all that kind of uncomfortable fidgeting around just stops and when the baby is pacified when the baby is peaceful it's very very still and so when we stay quite still we get that kind of works in Reverse and we get that sense of almost being held or contained within our own body it's very pleasant you might even feel as you said and breathe and relax and breathe and relax this kind of hum of well being a kind of glow or warmth of the body feeling contained at all now we're gonna do this for just a little bit longer than normal why you just sink even more deeply into this Pleasant relaxation you really can't get too relaxed when you're meditating except if you start falling asleep if you start falling asleep set up a little straighter have the intention to stay alert maybe open your eyes and if it gets really bad just stand up and because I'm guiding the meditation and I have to move here [Music] [Music] [Music] good now we're gonna stick with the relaxation part but we're gonna use our attention in a very different way instead of focusing we're almost going to do the opposite and simply let go of the mind gripping on to anything so if the mind attaches on to thinking we just relax the mind and let the thinking move on to whatever it's going to do but that tightening or gripping or grabbing of the mind onto something we're just relaxing that if the mind starts focusing on body sensations like we've just been meditating on relaxed body sensations but now if we start concentrating on those we instead just relax the mind and let the body sensations toddle off and do whatever they're going to do and we keep the mind relaxed and open the mind starts gripping on to external sounds or orienting to things in the room or whatever we notice that gripping and again we relax the core of the mind we open the jaws that are grabbing tight onto that phenomena and we simply instead let it go relax and open the mind so let's begin doing that now [Music] anytime the mind clamps down or tightens or bites into anything at all just release and relax and let go of that remembering that this releasing and relaxing and letting go is not a struggle it's not difficult we're simply relaxing so if it starts to be like this difficult effort just drop all that in a way that means you're gripping on to this idea of letting go so just just drop that let this be gentle and easy just like contacting relaxation in the body during this traumatic ssin can be quite pleasant and in a way we sort of guide ourselves gently towards more and more pleasantness in that practice this practice of releasing the gripping or the grasping or the clinging or the tightening in the mind is also quite pleasant at first it may seem a little busy or a little distracted or difficult or maybe it feels like a doing but as you settle into the practice of just over and over again releasing the grasping release releasing the gripping and the tightening you'll notice that this background sense of real pleasantness starts arising it just feels good to be with an open mind in this way and of course we're not focusing on that either but it's definitely there so if you're struggling and fighting and wrestling with the mind and this is real difficult just go back to shemitah for a while instead when you're doing this dropping the ball or do nothing kind of practice instead should feel very relaxing very pleasant and opening when it's wrestling and tight and difficult that's just more and more grasping and clinging more and more of what we're attempting to relax out of the reason this dropping the ball practice feels so good is something straight from the heart of Buddhism right it's a core teaching and that is when we release grasping our suffering diminishes the more that we grab on to things and in this way grabbing means either grabbing to bring it closer because we want it or grabbing to push it away because we don't want it when we're doing that kind of grabbing with the mind we are increasing our suffering whereas when we're letting go of grasping over and over again even if it's very very minut there will be a decrease in suffering and and it will start to feel pleasant simply by letting go of the gripping or tightening of the mind over and over it's a very simple practice I'm just like with the Shawmut apart we don't want to go to sleep however so if it starts to get really drowsy or kind of muddy and sludgy in there you can open your eyes and meditate like this with your eyes open or again sit up a little straighter or even if need be gently or slowly stand up whatever it takes to stay alert [Music] good so now you can continue with this or we can move into a slightly more specific kind of exploration and this is gonna take a little bit of effort this isn't simply releasing and relaxing here's what I want you to do when you notice that the mind has gripped on to something just like before you're just gonna let it go so you're not trying to focus on anything in particular if the mind grips we're just gonna let that go so we're relaxing the core of the mind but just before you relax notice what kind of gripping you're doing is it a grasping kind of situation where you are clinging where you want the thing or is it an aversive kind of grasping where you're trying to push it away I want it I don't want it I like it I don't like it sometimes they're neutral but usually it's one of the two aversion or grasping liking or not like it might also be neutral but the idea is for example a thought that you're interested in that interest is a kind of kind of grasping and kind of clinging like ooh that's tasty little morsel and so before just in the moment before you relax and let that go just notice the nature or the quality of the clinging like you know you could even label if you felt like her you could say look wanting and then if there's something that if there's a different kind of clinging going on where you're kind of it's a thing you're avoiding or trying to push away or you you're trying to get rid of it then you could say not wanting so same as before but with a little effort to investigate or just taste the flavor of the grasping before we open if grasping or gripping or clinging is like a tight fist before we open that fist we were just tasting or noticing the nature of the clinging because is there a like or a dislike in there I want or I don't want and sometimes you might notice a tremendous amount of neutrality in which case the relaxing the mind is very easy but if there's a strong Vaden a a strong sense of like or dislike the mind will tend to want to claim but noticing the vada actually helps to just relax away from it to understand that the mind is gripping and to just relax and let go so let's do this for a while try not to get all involved in overanalyzing overthinking spending too much time trying to decide this is just like if I gave you a glass of water and said is it salty you're sweet and you sipped it you'd know right away right there's it's just very direct don't spend any more time than that on each of these moments of creepy an example of the pushing away kind but not want the don't want is certain types of external sounds they might be loud or harsh in some way and there can be kind of a who don't don't impinge on my meditation I don't want that there so you're still focusing on it but you're kind of trying to push it away or you don't like it so that's an example of the sort of gripping to get rid of feeling sometimes the mind especially kind of the unconscious mind or in the background there can be a song playing and if you notice the nature of that gripping of course it's a want there's some how you like the song or it makes you happy to have that in your mind and so we just notice the kind of desire quality the want the vada the positive valence of that gripping before we then just let go each time the mind gets caught up in something grabbing on to something tightening around something notice the Veda notice if it's a want or don't want or maybe even a neutral and then let go seeing into the nature of this grasping this tightening can be quite insight producing good now let's let go of the analysis let go of the Vipassana and whether you're experiencing grasping or aversion or neutrality and instead just go back to the simple letting go so there's no thinking about it or looking into it in that way anymore but just back to the dropping the ball allowing the mind to just stay open and bright [Music] [Music] good now go ahead and let go of that just like we've been letting go of things for most of the meditation then let go of the formal sitting and feel free to move and stretch and orient yourself to whatever space you're in and if there's people in the space to the fact that there's other beings maybe your cat or dog or parrot or gerbil or whatever pets might be around plants books and so on orient yourself to your space now I can't see the questions from anyone online so if you've been asking them sorry I can't read them so I'm just going to talk about what's been coming up lately for a lot of people and something that majorly comes up is ways to increase the efficacy of practice you know what can I do to make my practice stronger better deeper more awakening produce more insights change my life for the better in more in deeper ways so I hear variations of those questions dozens of times a day and after many many years it's clear to me that you know these are this is what most people care about with meditation and that there's actually some pretty good answers that are really helpful for that and so let's just talk about that for a minute how can you get the most out of the meditation practice you're doing yeah and let's start by saying that in many traditions that question is sort of forbidden especially in non-dual traditions or Zen or zoton that's kind of a that's a kind of a stupid or forbidden question like you're not supposed to ask that if you're trying to get anywhere or get anything you don't get it and stop doing that and of course maybe in right in the sit you know you can see how thinking about how to get the most out of your practice that's going to you know kind of cause a gripping or grasping or whatever and so it's not helpful and it makes perfect sense why under those conditions you'd be directed to just let go of that the gaining mind you know you want to let go of the gaining mind but nevertheless no matter how much we try to kind of not look at it directly or pretend it's not there most of us are meditating for some reason and because we want some things in life to go better or be easier or to hurt less or simply maybe we just want to we like it as an activity and want to do it better so I don't think it's especially after a formal set there's nothing wrong with thinking about your goals and how to achieve them even if during the set that would be that could be really counterproductive obviously it'd be a real distraction I think outside of the formal practice we can talk like that and analyze those goals and think about ways to to kind of increase the efficacy of our meditation effort to get more bang for your Buddha buck so how do we do that the number one way the absolutely most important way the one that will make all the difference the one that will both deepen your practice and at the same time start to show real effects off the cushion like you'll really notice something's going on is practice in life practice in the action practice in motion so you know if we if we do really deep sitting on the cushion we're doing like this very kind of intensive lab work in our formal sits and that's really necessary and important it helps us go super deep and to and to kind of remove a lot of extraneous stuff so we can really look clearly at certain things like we were noticing the beta of each of these sensations that we were kind of letting go of you know that's a real laboratory kind of experiment and that's good it's necessary but if we want it to start to deeply affect our lives more obviously and quicker you know we want to start doing this kind of thing as we're walking around and of course there's just as many meditations walking around as there are on the cushion pretty much most of the meditations you can do on the cushion you can do in in life in action presumably not while driving operating heavy equipment you know shaving your head or anything cutting a steak we there's plenty of meditations we probably don't want to do in those kind of situations but for example noticing the Veda like we just did you could do that all day long you know even if you don't even release the thing because you need to engage with it for work or whatever you can still notice the the grasping and the quality of that am i wanting this am i trying to get rid of it what's going on with that another really simple one that is always recommended and it's ridiculously effective is to just meditate on breathing you know does the body sensations of breathing just stay kind of lightly focused on that not focused in a high concentrated way but focused in a checking in with my breath as I'm walking around all day long right this is very relaxing and opening and tends to bring you into the moment over and over and over my favorite one if I could assign it to everyone and have them do it for 10 years I would is meditating on emotions meditating on body sensations of emotion whether their little tiny emotions in the face or the throat or feelings in the chest or the belly or even some emotions our whole body feeling even in your hands and feet and the tips of your ears you know contacting emotion getting clear about emotional body sensation understanding that emotions are just happening like the weather we don't own them there's a no self quality to emotions you know they're not me they're not mine they're just happening and I can explore them and feel them without having to take action on them or do something about it or change something or feel bad about it but rather just feel the emotions all day long while having equanimity with them that is a life changing powerful amazing practice especially if you do way way way too much of it you start to just become tremendously clear about your emotions and not only does that help you interact with other people because you know what you're feeling it actually helps you know what they're feeling and it even increases your intuition because intuition is just you know gut feeling it's subtle emotions you're having because your unconscious mind is telling you you know it's seeing something you're not seeing and the way it tells you that is by giving you subtle emotions so your intuition can go way up and beyond that it's just a fabulous way to find some freedom because gripping in grasping and wrestling with emotion all day long is such a hard thing for people I suffered from this so much in my life like trying to get a good feeling and not have a bad feeling and change this feeling and why do I feel like this now and you know and it's so it seems so real and it's so painful and fraught with suffering and it was like a miracle to learn to just sit with feelings and not have to do anything about them not have to understand you know what's causing it and now what-what my you know best reaction is and what I have to say to that person and do over here in my life and all that but instead all of which is fine by the way but at least in the meditation I could sit and just let the emotions happen without giving them so much meaning and also without thinking that they're me or mine right they have an not equality theirs they're not me and not mine they're just happening and taking that off the cushion and bringing it into life was really really amazing just revolutionized revolutionized my experience at various jobs my experience with bosses my experience with the employees my experience you know it just affects every area of life and as you let go of the tension and tightness around emotions and instead can be with them and again be with them not just more sensitively but with more equanimity so you feel them more clearly and distinctly and sharply but they bother you less that's just amazing yeah so I would highly recommend that so this practice and life thing takes the kind of lab experiments you're doing on the cushion and pushes them out into production out into the world even if they're alpha tests or beta tests it's super powerful and of course this is how integration really happens if you want if you're having these big experiences sitting and then but you're having trouble translating them in your life it's because you know you have to get used to doing these things in life and of course at first you do it under conditions that are really really easy because you know maybe meditating on all the subtleties of emotion you're having in a really intense contract negotiation at work where there's a lot of skin in the game and a lot of money on the table and it's you know really fraught and you that might not be the best place to begin your practice of you know meditation in action but it's very easy to do this under simple conditions so the simplest condition is walking meditation and in fact you know that's considered to be as valid and powerful as sitting meditation so if you are into it you can just you know walk in the park or go for a walk on the beach you know I was just on the beach in San Francisco today so I'm thinking about the beach but go for a nice walk where you're not in immediate danger of getting hit by cars or whatever and you can do whatever technique you like as you're moving around emotional meditation breathing meditation feeling the Vaden of meditation you know feeling the bottoms of your feet as you walk is the really classic one and you know you don't have to do the Vipassana robot thing where you you know take one step every 50 years or whatever you can just walk normal and you know meditate as you're moving through the world and that's in a way the easiest one either that or were like doing some really simple activity like you're gardening or you're cleaning the house or just hanging out in the Sun with you know your cat or whatever it's a really nice time to just bring meditation into this simple activity and actually you know enjoy the activity more while you're doing it start out your practice in life with really simple situations and then little by little you'll get better at integrating it into more and more complex situations until you really are sitting there doing some kind of crazy you know deep meditation on Veda now while you're talking having this super intense contract negotiation or whatever that's what I'm always doing you know it becomes more and more a part of life instead of you know something you just practice off to the side of life and that's where really you know that's where it matters coming into bringing it into life bringing it into your day so number one thing practice in life and then of course the other thing is to go to retreats even if it's a home retreat even if you're doing it alone at home to take a retreat take a half day or a day or a weekend or three days or five days or two weeks or whatever but take some time to get to almost do the opposite of practice in life take your on the cushion and laboratory practice really deep into the lab you know where there's just no interruptions for a long long time and that tends to be energized our practice you know reveals new things it gives you shows you new depths and also it you know you get breakthroughs so that afterwards for a long time there will be momentum meditation will be a lot easier and also you know it kind of is the antidote for that kind of plateau thing that can happen for a while sometimes the practice you know it's really working and it got it to this nice place but it feels like it's been on cruise control for a long time and and even a short retreat even a weekend of just really focusing unmet eight hours a day for two days can kind of often break through can often cause a breakthrough to happen and sort of re-energize everything so practice in life and retreats are the two big ones it's a bunch of other little ones those two are the big ones for really starting to make a difference and to see the benefits of your meditation practice in your life so that's what I have to say about that obviously like I said at the beginning I'm sitting here talking to you from the echoey empty now freezing cold sf DC San Francisco Dharma collective space the space which is beautiful and you know everyone spends a lot of time keeping clean and organized and there's you know it's beautiful in so many ways it's also really expensive and it's sitting here empty so during this time when SF DC has closed down its I don't know how many right now it just happened today so I don't know if every every program is is canceled or just some of them I'm not sure but I'll just say well at least a lot of programs are not happening in person it's extra important that you donate because you know we want to keep our Dharma collective going we want to keep the space open because of course this plague that we're currently isolating ourselves in a very safe ways to avoid or to minimize or to help you know keep from spreading everywhere that's gonna be passed and yet if it takes more than a little while it's gonna be hard to keep the doors open here so we want to keep f SF DC fresh and happy and fluffy and shiny and so it's extra important that you get online and donate to the Dharma collective as much as you can it's really helpful I know that I'm we're not doing deaths Sangha on Saturday night a big part of death Sangha has been to you know make us very aware of our mortality make us very aware of you know that old age sickness and death can come at any time you know these core Buddhist themes that are in no way core spiritual themes for all human beings and right now I think we've got a lot of that going on in the regular world you know a lot of pointing that out and at the same time it's an extra important time to you know meditate with some of these concerns and so what I'll try to do I can't promise right now I'm gonna have to arrange it but I'll try to livestream some kind of class on Saturday night about this like a death meditation class with the special caveat that death Sangha never gets live stream that song is a special thing that's in person there's no cameras there's no recording and so even though it will be at the death Sangha time on the death Sunday night because it's a live streamed recording it won't actually be just Sangha it will just be some kind of guided meditation on these issues right but I'll still try to make that happen at let's say 7 o'clock this Saturday and I think many other programs are being live-streamed we just won't be here in person for a little while so that's as much as I can say about that tonight because I think everything's although all the gears are still turning and I'm not sure all the decisions have been made so let's just meditate we're gonna meditate for about another eight minutes or so longer than we usually do at the end here but I'd like to have a nice sit and if you're into Metta I'd like you to do metaphor everyone who's scared right now everyone who's sick right now everyone who's suffering in whatever way they've perhaps lost their job or they're looking at you know losing quite a bit of income or even losing a loved one or losing their own life so during this time let's do some extra Metta again it'll just be silent you can do whatever you want but we'll sit for a little longer than normal here together and then at the top of the hour I'll ring the bell and that will be that so let's do this thing [Music] [Music] all right thank you everybody for joining me and hope to see you soon either online or in person have a good one bye bye

Channel: Michael Taft

Views: 1,225

Keywords: meditation, mindfulness, relaxation, buddhism, dharma, mahayana, emptiness

Id: 7xN0U-ukucY

Length: 90min 11sec (5411 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 12 2020