Exploring Emptiness in the Breath

hello creatures of earth alien beings others welcome back from uh the holidays season welcome to 2021 welcome to the madness and uh the glory of life on this wonderful planet i uh massively amazingly uh wildly overjoyed to be with you here again this evening uh at an earlier time an easier time for many people an easier time for me too we decided to change the time for 2021 so i hope this is working out for you and my apologies to anyone watching this later for whom it didn't work out but this is the new reality of 2021 is we're going to do this a little earlier to make it a little easier for many folks so i hope that you had a wonderful time off if you did have any time off in late december and early january i know a lot of people went on retreats meditation retreats which is awesome i support anyone going on a meditation retreat i think that's the coolest possible use of your vacation time lots of people are still on retreat so uh good luck to them going deeper in their meditation i feel like before we dive in here i want to review you know almost every meditation we did in 2020 which is a lot of meditations i bet we did at least 45 if not more um on youtube here and every one of those meditations was following kind of a understanding of the sequence of how we're sitting not everyone but most of them and if you look in the kind of like show notes that are there for a lot of the meditations i write it out look here's what we're doing um and so you can go back if you review those all those meditations are there for you to you know re-listen to re-experience um and if you do go back to the ones that have notes which is most of them you'll see that there's kind of a system that we're using and this is a really common system used in vajrayana buddhism it's a system used in uh zogchan traditions in mahamudra traditions and other vadriyana traditions and it's pretty straightforward in a way it's the simple version but it will help you to understand what we're doing you know so just remember that we're almost always starting out with shamatha and then going to some kind of vipassana and then maybe doing something even beyond that in the non-dual uh only realm and so in the simplest way of understanding it we're always starting out with shamatha and then moving to do some kind of the pashna or investigation so shambhatta is staying calm essentially relaxed focused becoming relaxed and clear and bright and the passion is investigation right looking into phenomena when it when after our summit to portion i'm guiding you uh with instructions about you know looking at the sense of self or looking at sensory experiences arising and so on and so forth that's all for passionate or investigation right so we're almost always doing some kind of shamatha followed by some kind of a passion not always sometimes we do a mandala visualization or you know a more loving kindness oriented practice or something but usually we're going to do that first part usually the first half of the hour is shaman to practice and you know that usually i divide shamatha into two parts shamatha with an object where we're working on a specific concentration object and shaman without an object where the mind is just then allowed to remain relaxed and open without trying on purpose to focus on any particular thing so you know we've got to then depasana or the pashna and then that first shamatha section is usually divided into two pieces with an object and shove it to without an object so that's the usual path there and there's a lot of things we can do that we would call shamatha there's a lot of things we can do that we would call the pashna and there's of course practices to do after that if we get very good at those so i just want to reintroduce all that at the beginning of the year here both to help you you know look back on all the practices we did last year and understand again the basic structure of how those fit together and also to have a better understanding of what we're doing in 2021 and i will always reference those terms shamatha vapashna and other terms to help you get where things kind of sit within this very simple simplified map of meditation okay so that's just a little uh intro to what we're doing what we've been doing what we will be doing to help you kind of stay oriented and uh both to the past and also to the future practice and uh probably in some of the uh descriptions of the videos moving forward i'll put a little bit more of the diagrams and more of the understanding what's going on because it can get a little complex understanding how things fit together so with that let's get going and as usual we'll do some shamatha practice and then see what happens after that okay and remember that shamatha practice which a lot of people call concentration practice but that's not what shamatha means shamatha means remaining calm or sitting in calmness and so remember that this kind of practice that we're doing here even when we're concentrating on an object it's not about being all tight and intense it's about relaxing and enjoying and staying nice and concentrated but you know notice the term shamatha the main name is not oh we're staying all tight but rather we're relaxing we're being open we're enjoying okay so it's important to understand that the mind becomes concentrated through a process of letting go not a process of controlling okay so let's begin and as usual if you're going to do the meditation take off your glasses get in your meditation posture and i'll just remind you of the main points of the posture which is the absolutely crucial one is that your lower back is curving forward right and when you do that you sit forward just a little bit but you'll notice how your spine goes up your chest goes out it's really really crucial it's usually hard to do if you're sitting in such a way that your knees are higher than your hips and so that's why when we sit on a meditation cushion it elevates the butt makes your knees lower than your hips and you it's really easy for that lower back to curve like that so make sure you're sitting in such a way which i'm having a hard time doing in this chair tonight make sure you're sitting in such a way that your lower back is curving in let's try to get the there we go um and uh and that's going to make almost all the rest of this be just effortless and all the rest of this means then your back is upright your shoulders are back your chest is out just a little bit and then crucially your head is not up like this chin isn't out or something people do a lot of stuff like that no your chin is tucked just a little tiny bit but the chin is tucked okay it's not in like you know chin lock where you're doing a pranayama lock or something it's just tucked just a little tiny bit okay and then um the head is buoyant it's not all tight it's buoyant meaning it feels like it's just the head feels like it's kind of suspended by a cord from the ceiling just sort of hanging there and that feeling is brought about by the fact that your spine is kind of balanced in just the right way when you get that lower lower back correct your spine goes upright kind of effortlessly and then all the other things your shoulders your rib cage your neck your head all of that just kind of balances off the upright spine just right at that point then you want to put your hands like this in your lap or you can put them on your thighs if you like that better people ask me really often should i meditate with my eyes open or my eyes closed and the answer is it doesn't matter do what works for you i don't think it's a big deal either way [Music] there are pros and cons to both just do whatever works although over time experiment with both because it's worth trying out they both have their advantages and also of course like anything else they're downsides so give that a shot i'm trying to think there's any other major thing about your posture you know a big thing about posture is that it it already reflects the core of meditation practice the core of meditation practice is to be both alert and relaxed calm and clear and so we want the body to be alert sitting up nice and straight but then relaxed so it's like the body is already meditating the body is already expressing this balance in meditation and so it sets up everything just right now i just realized i left the heater on it's making a bunch of noise i do have a heater these days so i'm going to go turn that off i'll be right back there we go so you've got your body in the meditation posture and the meditation monster is expressing this core thing about meditation practice which we'll come back to again and again and again that it's both alert and relaxed it's both bearing down and intensifying and also easing up and opening and getting those two things balanced and then keeping them balanced for the whole meditation that's a big part of how we get better at meditating so we start by expressing that in the body it's alert and relaxed and then as usual let's begin with our shamatha with an object on a concentration object and as always you can use whatever object you want a mantra a visualization a fire casino [Music] any kind of body sensation and the body sensations of breathing if that works for you so to begin in the new year let's just go ahead and use body sensations of breathing and what i'd like you to do is at the first part of this meditation breathe nice and deep so nice long deep in-breaths using deep belly breathing you really feel your belly expanding on the in-breath and then the belly retracting on the out breath and if you were to look down that should be visible you know like the belly region is expanding enough you can see it expanding or if you had your hands on your belly you would feel them moving outward right and then as you breathe out you actually see it uh contracting or you see the hands moving in so begin uh meditating on these long deep in-breaths and just concentrating specifically on the feeling feel the air going in the nose feel the air going down the windpipe feel your lungs expanding the chest expanding the back and the ribs expanding and then as it moves further down the torso feel your diaphragm pushing downwards and the belly expanding out the kidney area in back also expanding out all the way down you might even feel all the way down to the perineum a kind of expansion of the in-breath and then on the out breath you're just feeling all that in reverse the belly area retracting and contracting the chest area contracting the diaphragm moving up and the air then moving up out of the windpipe and back out of the nose so this is what you're actually paying attention to when i'm saying meditate on the breathing meditate on the sense of breathing in the body it's a concentration object that it's very easy to hang on to for many people because there's enough going on to pay attention to if on the other hand you like one particular area many people are partial to feeling just the breath in their nose because it gives them that one one little spot to look at or let's say you like feeling the chest because that's clear or whatever you're welcome to stay with just one area if you want to get this full body breathing meditation going then feel each of those areas like i was describing good so what we'll do now is as you're concentrating on this and you can even be saying to help you concentrate saying on the in-breath mentally breathing in breathing in and then on the out breath breathing out breathing out using a nice calm uh soothing tone of voice breathing in maybe you want to repeat it breathing in breathing in breathing in [Music] breathing out breathing out like that breathing out so it's just nice slow in-breaths with labeling nice slow out breaths with labeling and while you're doing that i will just in the background be helping you to relax the body so this is not your focus object this is just kind of something to remember to allow to happen while you're focusing we want to keep that body nice and relaxed and at the same time remembering the relaxation is just half of the half of the process so we're not getting sleepy or drowsy or drifting off we're staying clear we're staying bright the mind is very bright very engaged with the meditation at the same time that we are becoming more and more relaxed so allow your forehead and scalp muscles to release and relax and let go and your eyebrows and eyelids and all the little muscles around your eyes you can just let that really relax whether your eyes are opened or closed open or closed the muscles of the eyes need to relax and become very very very soft allow your cheeks to release and let go your mouth and lips to relax and your jaw to be actually not clenched so the upper lower teeth are not touching and just notice then how a kind of mood of softness and relaxation and maybe even a little kind of meltiness begins to be felt in the face and the head good and now that's already beginning to affect your neck muscles and your throat muscles so that the neck and throat feels more easeful more open more relaxed and even your shoulders begin to release more to let go of tension to open and remember now when i'm giving these relaxation guidances we're not doing uh stretches or doing yoga you're staying really still remember shamita means staying relaxed sitting calmly or abiding in peace and those words are really meant very seriously we're we're really staying still not moving again not in a tense way it's not like we're still out of tightness we're still out of relaxation so notice that your throat is open your neck muscles have relaxed and your shoulders are much more easeful and again there's just kind of this beginning of this nice warm melty sensation over the body that you can feel kind of a wave of relaxation moving through your entire body and coaxing you more deeply now into relaxing and opening as you continue to focus on your shamatha object now let the arms and the hands and the fingers just become completely limp they just seem like seaweed moving uh effortlessly in the ocean there's just kind of this liquid quality of relaxation where there's no tension at all of any kind in the arms and hands and the fingers and notice how when the arms and hands and the fingers let go and the shoulders and the neck and the throat let go and the face and the head muscles let go that again a nice powerful wave of ease and openness and settling moves through the body and allows you to drop now more deeply into a relaxed clear open bright meditation so that's very good and now notice that your chest region and your upper back region and all the muscles around that upper torso area are relaxing and opening feeling more ease and relief and release in the upper torso and feel then your diaphragm if you're good at feeling your diaphragm notice the diaphragm relaxing a little bit still working of course to power the breathing but if you're keeping a lot of tension in your diaphragm notice that you can just let go of that tension now you can just release it and relax it so just do that now and then as the body relaxes even more notice that the belly which has been doing this big expansion contraction thing that's been almost like massaging and easing any discomfort or tension in the belly so that all that discomfort just drains away and the belly region in front releases and relaxes and lets go of tension and the kidney region in the back also becomes more easeful and effortless and open and you just notice that there's a sense of relief that comes when the belly region relaxes we hold so much tension there and when that tension drains away and there's this sense of ease and openness in the belly uh it feels great and so let's just feel that easeful opening there that relief that relaxation in the belly and in fact also the relief and the letting go in the diaphragm the relaxation and release in the chest and of course the arms the hands the neck the head so that you tune into the pleasant even joyous quality of release and relief and letting go and relaxation and opening and you notice that it just allows you effortlessly now to just drop deeply into a more open a more easeful a more settled deep deep sense of stillness and clarity stillness and brightness that just feels really good remembering that deep down in there we're already fully awakened buddhas we do not have to somehow generate or create buddhahood it's already happening way down in there and when we relax and become clearer some of that let's call it just buddha light begins to shine forth and you start to feel more joyous you start to feel more energy and you notice a sense of clarity and peace coming into the mind right we're just every little bit of relaxation every little uh increasing clarity more of that natural awakeness that's always there begins to shine through it's really awesome now noticing that way down in the pelvic region can release and let go the hips the hip joints can relax and open the thigh region and the calves and shins and the feet and the toes all of that can just become like wet noodles totally relaxed totally at ease and that now the whole body feels really like the tension is gone like there's more room there's more space there's more ease there's a sense of peace and stillness and there's this clarity and brightness a kind of wakefulness comes across the being right and again this allows you to just settle and settle and settle more deeply much much much much much more deeply into your summit to practice as you're following your breathing or whatever you're doing there's now much more clarity much more openness much more ability to be with and let's just use that newfound piece we've kind of increased the letting go right we've increased the relaxation so now what i'd like you to do is allow that clarity to come forward just a little bit just a little bit more um precision around being with the breath once we get real relaxed there's this kind of temptation to kind of get all cozy in our bed and start to become you know woolly headed it starts to feel really fuzzy in there because it's so sleepy and nice and so we don't want to surrender to that mood remember we're awake this is clarity and brightness and vividness in the mind so even though we remain very relaxed very at ease i'd just like you to put just a little more effort into staying with the shamatha object so in other words we're not getting real control of your type but we're just allowing our clarity to stay with the object with a little bit more intentionality and that's going to balance out the the intensifying is going to balance out the easing up we just did all the relaxation we just did so now staying with the shamatha object see if you can find a nice balance between intensifying and clarity and staying with the object and also this sense of ease and peace and relaxing and letting go so let's just be with that together for a while here continuing to focus on that breath and relaxing and clarifying really feel how when you get on the right mixture the right combo of intensifying and easing up bearing down and easing up it will start to just lock in you'll feel the meditation deepening significantly good now if this is working for you and you want to stay with this object then go ahead and stay with it if on the other hand you'd like to now try show it without an object we'll just shift off the breath and allow the mind to just relax so now just like the body relaxed but stayed bright stayed alert stayed upright i'm going to allow the mind to relax even further and yet stay bright stay clear again if this is not something you're ready for that's okay stay with the breathing on the other hand if you want to do this show until without an object we allow the mind to relax in such a way that we're not paying attention to anything rather we're just resting in awareness itself meaning the mind is not tightening around any objects the mind is the the flashlight of attention is all the way wide open and that doesn't mean the flashlight is moving around it means it's just resting wide open and of course thoughts continue to come up perhaps emotions continue to come up perhaps events like sounds and stuff keep happening and happening in the world but we're not allowing the flashlight of attention to tighten around those instead we're just staying wide wide wide wide wide open and relaxing our attention so let's do that now usually i call this dropping the ball right because the the um you know the habit of mind is to grab on to these these um objects of attention like grab onto a thought grab onto an emotion grab onto an external sound grab onto a body sensation and what we're doing now is not holding on to that ball so if it grabs on we drop the ball if the mind tightens on an object in other words it pays attention tension tension right you relax you let go you open and if the shamatha with an object if the focusing on the breath did not stabilize the mind enough this will feel very chaotic it won't settle but and so just go back and keep doing the focus on the breathing but if the mind is uh adequately settled it will remain relatively open still grabbing onto stuff here and there but it then will go back to opening this is effortless in other words uh it does not take effort to relax we're relinquishing effort everything every time so the mind tightens we just relax we let go of that effort so let's do that now so so we're just allowing the mind to stay very relaxed and very open the attention is melted another way to understand or to uh make a metaphor is that the core of your mind is melted the core of your mind is relaxed any tension in the core of the mind is released and open and let go now it's very easy here to get sleepy or to get dull again that kind of wool gathering or just settling into the warm comfortable effortless zone can get really sleepy so we don't want that so make sure you're still sitting up a little bit straight make sure you're aware of that clarity and the brightness in the mind and if shamatha with an object is without an object is coming together properly you'll notice that you feel oddly concentrated it feels clear and bright and stable but you're not actually concentrating on anything it's just that the mind is open and bright you'll get a very very powerful sense of settling and clarity so let's keep working with this so each time the mind gets into its habit of tension just relax the mind gets into its habit of tightening and beginning to follow content just relax remember we're not concentrating or even following any content at all we're just allowing the mind to stay easy and open bright and clear and settled we never struggle in this section it's always letting go if it's really not working you just go back to shamatha with an object and do that kind of use of attention meditation [Music] here it is absolutely no struggle we just keep letting go of any tension that arises in the mind and allowing it to relax and open and notice that letting go of it of tension in the mind is not struggling with the mind or fighting with the mind or trying to control or direct the mind it's the opposite of all that you just relax the mind okay good now as i mentioned we do shamatha and then often not always but often will then move to vipassana so what i'd like you to focus on now and this will just be fun and interesting if you used [Music] the breath sensation as your focus object let's focus on the breathing sensation now again but looking at it in of a passionate way and what we do when we're looking at something of a passionate way is we're actually investigating it and what i want you to notice about the breath sensation in this vipassana meditation is i want you to notice it's emptiness and so that can mean a lot of things i'll define it really kind of broadly and that is that it's always changing that it's impermanent but it does not have any source but it does not have any basis it's not dependent on anything it's just in a way a sensation hanging out there in awareness as far as awareness is concerned the breath sensation is coming from nowhere and returning to nowhere it's arising out of nothing and returning to nothing so there is a breath sensation happening and at the same time it's like only seemingly happening because you can't really find a concrete breath sensation if you try to look for it to be solid and permanent it's continually slipping away from you it's changing it's vanishing it's arising over here vanishing over there it has this nebulous nature so let's turn attention we're going to use attention now a little bit or we can just allow the we can think of it as the um breath sensation simply arising in awareness and not use attention but either way there's a little bit of intention to look at something and we're going to notice its emptiness so notice now the emptiness of this breathing sensation follow it in the way you did before moving up and down through the body but notice at every point it's emptiness noticing or investigating its emptiness can be like noticing that there's a sensation there there's a breath sensation there but it's almost like it's a dream or it's almost like it's a some kind of diaphanous cloud it's there but not there it has there's an experience but it's not an experience that's based on some kind of solid object rather you notice the ephemerality the undefinability the vanishingness and reappearingness of this breath sensation look very clearly look very deeply and notice this about the breath sensation again remember that in vipassana we're actually making a little bit of effort it's not just staying calm in shamatha practice shamatha means remaining calm in vipassana the word means to investigate so we're actually now we've clarified through staying calm we're now investigating a little bit so we're doing something okay okay good very very good let's end the meditation there just allowing yourself to begin very slowly to move and stretch maybe wiggling your fingers and toes getting some movement back into your body if you want to orient a little bit if your eyes are closed you can just move your head back and forth looking at the room move your hand up and down looking at the room just to orient after having your eyes closed for a long time sometimes that's helpful and you know stretch do some pandulation right look that up pandylation it's really a term about this kind of automatic stretching that the body does after sleep so we weren't to sleep at all but i'm adapting it to after meditation we pendulate move our bodies stretch our bodies and come back around to the next part of the program and the next part of our program tonight will be me talking a little bit about this vipassana we did [Music] first of all you notice i keep saying vipassana [Music] and vipassana is just the way we talk about it in vajrayana right it's we use the sanskrit word instead of the pali word those are two different languages but the same word in two different languages [Music] and remember that as i keep saying shamatha means peaceful staying um abiding in peace remaining calm could just think of it as staying calm um sometimes the staying is used to mean the concentration part right the mind is staying on an object um and then the calm is just that relaxation so it's alert relaxation engaged relaxation that shamatha but vipassana means to investigate right special investigation to another another way you can translate the word is almost like analysis to really look at things and i often hear you know people talk about vipassana or vipassana as a kind of being with things as they really are or naked seeing or whatever and it's not that i don't understand those terms but i would push back on those ideas a little bit because it's not that we're just simply being with experience because that is in a way shamatha but rather what we're doing is investigating experience and so um and and we're investigating it for the purposes of awakening right we're not just sitting with it and and kind of blobbing out when we get into the vipassana mode we are looking for specific things about experience again in early buddhism we'd be looking for the impermanence thing the way that sensations are always changing we'd be looking for the no self which is um the no self quality of experience which is kind of a [Music] way to talk about emptiness actually and we also um might look at the way that sensations arising can have this component of dissatisfaction that's early buddhism when we move into the vadriana type stuff we're doing here the main thing we're always looking for is the emptiness component now we might look at other things we might still look at the impermanence we might look at the the dependent colorizing the fact that for any sensation to occur it's like the whole world has to occur and that that co-arising shows that no sensation is a is uh particular or is there on its own it's not arising because it's a unique entity but in fact it's embedded in the matrix of the world and it's something you can notice really clearly it's not just an idea you see that it all comes together but here we're looking at the main thing which is simply the emptiness quality and again we're we're investigating i keep saying seeing or looking but of course in this case we're feeling the fact that the sensation is not clearly defined it's not like there's a boundary to the sensation that is absolutely stable and clear it's not like there's a center to the sensation that's stable and clear it's not like that the boundary and the center stay the same over time it's and even more even more to the point the idea of a thing called the sensation of the breath is an idea you have to go oh i'm going to kind of think about the body and i'm going to think about certain sensations in the body and then i'm going to divide it from these other sensations you're making a whole mental construction to even create a thing called the body's sensation of breathing but when we relax away from that and we notice that there's just a moving stream of experience that has certain clear things about it but a lot of other things about it are very unclear a lot of things about it are very nebulous then we're starting to get into that quality of emptiness right and so um we're always looking in vipassana we're investigating and we're not just looking for any old thing that's why i'm pushing back on the idea of being with experience as it really is because it's not that we're just [Music] for example i'm gonna i'm gonna really um investigate the texture of things and you know that can be mindfulness mindfully we can investigate texture and that can be really enriching and clarifying and make our life more beautiful and so on but it's not unless we go very deep with that in which case we'd start to notice the emptiness that is not going to necessarily be an awakening investigation it's going to be um an enlivening beautiful investigation but when we want to go even more deeply in there so that it's alivening and awakening alivening and becomes more beautiful but actually begins to open up our enlightened mind we have to start seeing things like the emptiness so we're not just doing any old investigation we're not just looking at cool stuff about stuff or just noticing yep just noticing um instead we are noticing particular things in this case we're particularly noticing emptiness and if that's not a clear concept over time it will be [Music] over time you will begin to notice emptiness emptiness more deeply and more with a lot more confidence part of how you know you're doing it right so to speak is when you're investigating the emptiness let's say in this case of the breathing sensation it will start to feel like a relief you will notice a sense of relief because when we notice when we're doing compassion well and we're noticing that emptiness some of our suffering is some of our um dissatisfaction some of the pain of experience is actually removed i'm noticing in the comments that people are talking about how painful sensations get less painful that's right because um it's not that the let's say if there is such a thing the objective level of pain necessarily instantly decreases it's that when we're noticing the emptiness we're not making such a thing out of the pain and when we stop making such a thing out of it it becomes easier to work with we feel relief now this relief might not be uh immediately really large or really clear but it it'll be there and it'll be there a little bit you'll notice that there's a kind of there's more room in experience and there's more like oh okay kind of kind of um kind of more uh it's kind of easier to be with so the passion is interesting because even if the sensation is really painful or difficult at the same time you'll notice there's a kind of relief involved in seeing its emptiness so that's one way to understand even if you don't understand emptiness as a concept you'll start to know that you're going towards it okay so we've got these two sections of most of these meditations and most of the meditations last year we've got the shamatic component we've got the passionate component and then we can go on into repa and go on even beyond that into like a spontaneity um but usually we're doing the shamatha and the vipassana we often divide the shamatha into two types with and without an object and then in vipassana i want you to be very clear that you're doing something there and that you're looking in a particular way for a particular thing it's not just hanging out we're see we could translate the posture in another way as seeing clearly it's often translated that way seeing clearly specific things we're looking for things that bring awakening and the things that bring awakening are looking at things like impermanence and no self and dependent colorizing but particularly emptiness so i want you to um engage this year with the the passionate part of this and understand that you're you're bringing a kind of razor sharp clarity of awareness into what's going on to notice these properties of awakening okay and that you are already existing um a wakefulness your already existing buddha nature right what does buddha mean it means awake that's what the word buddha means awake you already have a awakened nature bringing that awakened nature to bear on these qualities of experience to notice the awakening that's already present in every experience okay i'll briefly look at some questions here um peng says thank you during shamatha without an object i had my eyes closed but for a few seconds it felt like a bright light in the room very bright yeah as we get deeper into meditation it is very common that there will be lights in the mind not lights in the room the room can be pitch black and your eyes are closed but you'll still see lights these lights are not there for all people it's not like you should try to get lights in your mind but if they arise that's a good sign what's it a sign of it's a sign of unification of the mind as as you the mind unifies it's sometimes for some people begins to get very bright in there so when i talk about the clarity and brightness of awareness i'm not talking about those lights but those lights are interesting and useful just as a kind of a sign that if they're there it's a positive sign that the mind is unifying that you're getting clear and your concentration is better they're not there it doesn't necessarily mean anything so but it is a positive indicator so that's good alex is saying thank you thank you for joining us alex ben question sometimes i notice an emotional pushback to investigating emptiness instead of a relief does that point to a mistake in to any mistake in the approach it doesn't usually mean there's a mistake in the approach usually and this is not always so just sometimes it usually means um that there's something you don't want to see right so a big part of our conscious experience is suppressing things we don't want to notice and instead we um push them into the unconscious when we start meditating the things that we pushed into the unconscious start arising because we're not suppressing them anymore and so for example maybe you're you start looking into the body sensations and you might notice that or you might notice this pushback well maybe you're starting to have some feelings come up and you don't want to feel those feelings that's really common and so the the antidote is to sit there and feel the feelings let them come up even if they're really uncomfortable even if they are unpleasant we sit with those feelings and you might not do like a sharp emptiness investigation on the feelings at first you might just simply contact them you know do that kind of really really basic vipassana of just contact and maybe noticing that they're impermanent they're changing feelings are changing right we're still looking at the awakened we're still looking at the awakened property there but we would switch to doing the emotions if you think that's what's going on sometimes there's another thing that can happen is it's not so psychological there's just this property of resistance for some reason and who knows why we just there's a pushback and so in that case find the pushback how do you know there's pushback where is it occurring is it a emotion what is it why don't you want to do it and some sometimes it can be because the the shamatha felt so relaxed and open you don't want to do um but that shows that in that case you're getting a little dullness you're getting just slightly slightly slightly too relaxed just a little too drowsy and so in that case the pushback is the pushback of not wanting to wake up you know and so you really want to push back against that definitely wake the up if on the other hand it's just resistance find the resistance and then look at the emptiness of that okay david has the same question it's hard to sustain if it's hard to sustain because there's pushback then i've just given you examples of what that can be about and maybe what to do about it if the it's hard to sustain because you're getting exhausted then stop doing it you know if the mind is just tired it's too hard to concentrate for that long do it as long as you can and then just back off and you can go back into just relaxing and focusing or you can just end the meditation but don't push it to the point where it like hurts of course we want to be very concerned with keeping ourselves you know within our limits of comfort uh noah has an interesting question about handling dharma drama especially separating faith in a teacher tradition i would just say that that's a wonderful interesting fascinating question you'll see that in the deconstructing yourself podcast i have at least like five episodes about that question but it's uh kind of too big for the just few minutes we have left here so i'm just gonna apologize and say [Music] hopefully we'll talk about that another time it is a big issue and i've worked with it a lot again go go to the podcast for hours of talking about this before we end here i want to switch gears and remind you that these meditations are brought to you by myself and by san francisco dharma collected it's sponsored by san francisco dharma collective san francisco dharma collective splits any proceeds that come from [Music] to that are donated to them from this meditation with me and so uh if you're feeling generous and you're feeling like you have an over abundance of cash if you've got a few spare million dollars hanging around or a couple of spare bitcoins you can donate those to san francisco dharma collective you could donate that and a san francisco dharma collective will use it to bring more teachers more buddhist meditation more youtube teachings more zoom teachings different teachers different teachings to you free they're offered free to the whole world and and if anyone out there in the world wants to give donations back to the san francisco dharma collective and also they split that with me that would be wonderful and it will help us and help san francisco dharma collective to bring more of these meditations to you and to the rest of the world to the rest of the world for free so people are asking about the schedule this live session is always thursday night uh at now in the in the year in this new year it's at 5 30 p.m on thursday night every week almost every week usually on my twitter feed or on facebook or on the sfdc website uh there will be a notice if it's not gonna happen but you can pretty much guarantee uh 5 30 thursday night i'll be here guiding meditation answering questions giving teachings and so on so um as usual thank you everybody for joining me here i deeply deeply deeply love to have you here as katie is reminding me frantically in the uh live chat this saturday night on the san francisco dharma collective zoom channel i'll be leading death sangha death sangha is an intense powerful challenging engagement with death so if you feel up for that go to the link that's in the live chat to sign up on eventbrite we do not live broadcast death channel over youtube it's just too intense um it it's uh something that is a little just it's a little too um powerful but you can sign up uh on the san francisco dharma collective zoom link and join us this saturday for death sangha so i look forward to seeing you there that's cool because it's a zoom meeting we can interact a little more uh than is possible here on youtube and with that i will say thank you for joining me and see you soon everybody go to all the other sfdc teachers they're great they're powerful they're beautiful they're interesting they're wonderful and um it's just so great to be with you here uh uh teaching meditation joining together to do this stuff so i look forward to seeing you next week and see you also on saturday night at death sangha all right everybody bye

Channel: Michael Taft

Views: 2,666

Keywords: meditation, mindfulness, vipassana, relaxation, buddhism, dharma, nondual, mahayana, vajrayana, zen, dzogchen

Id: EENZpHirXvQ

Length: 90min 31sec (5431 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2021