Exploring Impermanence Day 4: The Six Elements | Sona

so what i want to start with um today is going back to ian mcgill christ's interview i i became aware of ian mcgill christ many years ago i came across a very very short talk he gave at the royal society of arts it was one of those animated talks about 15 20 minutes long that is still available on youtube if you google um mcgill christ and divine divided mind you probably find it kind of sums up a lot of his ideas in a very short space they're actually quite complex his ideas and he has in his book the master of emerson master in this emissary there's just so much information um it took me about two years to absorb it or had to read a bit and stop and think about it for quite a long time and then read a bit more and um just totally fascinating one of the things that um really more than anything comes across for me at least from his work is this idea of us overusing the um what it calls the left side of the brain and so no reason why we can't think in that way the left brain this this brain that's um functionality that's using a linear thought logic kind of certainly language based and kind of over thinking things and losing touch with the other part of the brain that is more susceptible more open to knowledge and information and ideas and thoughts that arise from a different type of thinking i don't know if he talks about this in his book i tried to find it but i i just remember this term or i must maybe even made it up um of the idea of metaphorical thinking um i liked i liked it as an idea like another way of thinking about things and um one of the simplest ways to perhaps think about presenting information and dealing with information in that way is the um it's a very very strong tradition in all all of our cultures called story telling so i'm going to start this morning with a very very simple story um quite a short story comes from the chinese tradition if you've been involved in tri-ratna buddhism you've probably heard this story before but the good thing about stories are that they should be told and retold and retold and retold because you know once otherwise the left brain kind of says i've got it end of story but that's just then your left brain taking over the the depths the power of the story so this is a story that comes from the chinese tradition and it's about an emperor who wanted to have an intellectual debate with a buddhist so he'd heard about buddhism and i'll shorten the story you might fill it out too much although it's good to fill out stories of course but time don't have the time to do it so get to the essence of it he wanted to have this um dinner party or occasion where he could get a experienced buddhist to come and explain and talk about and discuss buddhism so he set the whole thing up and he invites this uh renowned buddhist monk practitioner to the to the event i think he feeds him makes him welcome and then they'll sit back ready for this the main part of the evening i guess or the opening part of the day um where they can have this debate so the emperor starts by asking um the monk what is the teaching of the buddha or he may have asked him the question in another sort of way i can't remember the details and the monk says cease to do evil learn to do good purify the mind and then the emperor is waiting for more and he says is that it is that all and monk says cease to do evil learn to do good purify the mind and the emperor was slightly getting a little bit rattled by this and he said well i mean even a child of eight can understand that and then the monk very famously says well even a child of eight yes can understand that but um an old man of 80 can't practice it and so there's there's a lot of wisdom in that story and it's good to remind yourself and if anyone ever asks you what is buddhism you could also tell them well it's all about purifying the mind it's all about ceasing to do evil learning to do good and purifying the mind and of course once you start dwelling on that and thinking about it it starts raising all sorts of other issues and then through throughout the buddhist history it becomes very very complex and interesting and then then you arrive at questions like well what is the nature of mind uh with this demand to be purified and then some buddhist schools have you know they've developed that and they they um would say well the mind is already pure and so uh um you think oh well that's good i've got a pure mind but then you just try to live your life and you realize you're living your life with a an impure mind so it then leads to all sorts of diversification probably because people are so diverse and different systems different methods suit so many all the different types of people ways of approaching this basic simple um principle of ceasing to do evil learning to do good and purify your mind just by the way in buddhism we don't usually use the word evil it's probably more like ceasing to cause harm and that can be done in a whole number of ways it can be done with the body by hurting people by physically hurting people um it can be done with the voice by speaking um in a harsh way that's not friendly it um where the body can also be like taking things from people and so on and you can also harm people or at least harm yourself by the way you think so your mind your sort of thoughts your speech your actions these are all ways in which you can do harm and it's not life-affirming so becoming um that would be ceasing to be causing harm in whatever way that it may manifest and learning to do good would be [Music] the opposite of these things the more life affirming being kinder loving generous truthful satisfied and trying to clarify your own thinking and realizing that for instance that a lot of your views and so on um are just views most people don't even know where their views come from if you actually try to sorry i'm segueing here and i shouldn't do this really but if you is such an interesting question to ask yourself you say i already believe this and then you say why where did they where did i get that view from where did it come from did it i know when i asked some friends of mine he said i know where all my views came from it came from my mum and dad and so you know we are conditioned in a culture and society and by a family and we adopt views sometimes we don't even know we we know we hold them strongly but we don't quite understand why we have those views so that's just a segue i'll come back to the main point now so the the principle then of um getting to know the mind um it's it it it kind of works like this this buddhist there's a buddhist um buddhists have loads and loads of lists of how to approach things and one of the ways um of looking at it is what's called the three-fold way and it's um i use the buddhist terms it's sila samadhi and pragma which translate when you translate them into english it kind of almost means something slightly different but basically it's about ethics which is the ceasing to do evil and learning to do good and um meditation which is like clarify is like um sort of quietening the mind and then allowing the mind to to open up and then for a kind of contemplation a deep contemplation on what comes up and wisdom starts to arise and this process is isn't necessarily linear because often it's more cyclical but it's cyclical in a way of a of a spiral that goes one above the other so you start off maybe most people start off with meditation they want to meditate maybe don't quite know why they want to meditate but they've heard that meditation's good thing to do and then they discover that in order to go deeper in their meditation they have to look at their life and how they're behaving and thinking about things in their life so then they then start practicing this principle of um ceasing to do so much harm you know ceasing to crave for things and consume more things perhaps ceasing to be harsh in their speech there's all sorts of ways where we do harm and even in the way we think and um and then this allows us when we do this we become the opposite really we become if we're not causing harm we're usually helping people in some way helping ourselves and feeling better more bright and more energized and that in itself leads to the ability to go deeper in your meditation and then as you go deeper in your meditation more wisdom arises and you realize actually i can do even more on the ethical side so you've got this process of ethics concealer and then a meditation of quietening reflecting absorbing listening to ideas views working on them developing wisdom which then leads you back to realizing there's even more you can do in the purification of your mind so it's a lovely sort of process and it doesn't matter too much where you join it you will eventually do all three if you wanted to go if you wanted to rise in this helix or some people prefer the the kind of metaphor of going deeper and deeper into something that's mysterious and it's just a very very simple way of understanding a whole process then there's another really wonderful way of looking at this process as well which is um comes from the early buddhism called the awakening factors and uh there's um how many i think seven these awakening factors and they're kind of like you start practicing one and on the basis of that another one arises naturally and on the basis of that another rises it goes something like um on the basis of becoming aware simply becoming aware of what's happening particularly in your mind what you're doing you will start um becoming more aware your your you'll discover that awareness that you can become nowadays it's called mindfulness but unfortunately it's worth mindfulness has got all sorts of other ways of looking at things but from the buddhist point of view we use the word mindfulness and we use the word awareness but it is just like simple the simple ability to be aware of what's going on and if you practice doing that more and more giving yourself space to do it in and you can see what see we've been doing this in the meditations just being aware of the thoughts arising what happens when we try to sit and focus on one thing so you do practices like this to become more and more aware on the basis of this what will happen is you will naturally want to go deeper and understand more of let's call it the nature of mind of how we function and if you do this you will begin to see that um this process of doing harm to people causes you to be more blocks and and more tied down in a particular behavioral pattern that could be freed up and you then start um because you're freeing up more you get sort of a energy which allows you then to just keep much more and pay more attention to how you're behaving and making sure that you're doing not doing harm causing harm and creating what you could call good the opposite of that of harm of helping and caring and so on and this in turn then releases even more energy and that energy sometimes sort of bubbles up in you quite often in meditation when you've given yourself space and time to settle down and on the basis of all that energy sort of welling up you realize actually having all this energy welling up in you it's sort of kind of exciting and sometimes it's almost um for some people it's almost unknown um it's not very um it's not very obvious that it's happening but it it will be happening and you just kind of feeling oh this is this is really interesting and then you realize actually even this all this energy needs to be kind of unified and be calmed down so there's like this power of energy that kind of flows much more smoothly in this kind of quietened mind so you imagine being in that state of feeling you're so immensely powerful you have all this powerful energy that you can just direct in one s one phase and you you quieten down with it and you become absorbed by it which is the next favorite awakening factor you become more awake to this energy flowing and and you feel absorbed into it and then eventually you fill in this you you arrive at this place where you just feel you could be completely still there's nothing you want nothing you want to do you feel totally alive and um you're not you could say you're dead at this point but it's not like that it's just like you're fully alive life to everything in a way aware of everything but you don't need anything there's no there's no desire to collect something to crave for something there's no desire to push something away there's no confusion and it's um that's the kind of final state that the buddha arrives in so the whole process is a simple to understand okay very difficult to practice but it's very very um i find it very affirming that if you just start with mindfulness and awareness and paying attention to what's happening you will naturally want to go deeper and understand more which will naturally release more energy to apply to a lifestyle we're not lifestyle change but the way that we live and behave and being much more life affirming which will naturally lead to the release of release of more energy which will then need to be calmed down and you'll be absorbed in it and then you'll be sitting without needing to do anything fully alive fully awake in a in a state of um pure awareness you could see so it all sounds very easy and simple but of course it's going to take a long time to get to that stage but um and the more you practice and that practice can be done not just sitting on a cushion it can be practiced and it needs to be practiced really throughout the day so you're spending hours and hours of your day practicing this fundamental awakening of the mind so um i just wanted to mention that because i find it um very affirming and it's there's an image that um [Music] that that goes with this is something like you imagine a number of bowls of um like a fountain that's got several seven bowls in it and water is poured into the top bowl which would be the awareness the mindfulness and when the bowl fills up it naturally overflows into the next bowl which then gradually fills up which naturally then overflows into the next bowl and so on and so on and to all all the bowls there's this flow constant flow of energy into one after the other so you never arrive at the state of kind of nothing happening there's just this constant flow of you could have consciousness of mind and process of mind nature of mind is that something is flowing and um another way of looking is fundamentally it's pure it's kind of it's it's the the purity is um is solid is poisoned if you like by the behavior and by the way we react and so on through um craving for usually craving for pleasure through the senses in one form or another and for ill will of pushing things away and really not liking them and hating them and just being confused so um the the whole process starts with being aware so then the question is well how do you train yourself in awareness well one way is to sit as we have been doing being aware of your breathing and the approach we're taking this week is not so much of how do you use this technique of being aware of your breathing there's a lot more that could be said on that and structures to become aware of your breathing but it more more understanding that when you try to do a focused thing your mind naturally goes on to something else because it's more finds out more interesting and and then you have to be aware how it's gone on to something else and you bring it back so we're gonna focus on something else today which um some of you may never have done before and but it's it's it's actually focusing on the body and it's a kind of reflection and a direct experience so it's a kind of reflection that you do by experiencing the kind of elements of your body so what we're going to do is we're going to i'm going to lead you through um a reflection on the fact that your body has a number of elemental principles within it so they are to put it very simply they are the elements of earth water fire air space and we may end up with consciousness um it's not always included and what we're going to do is think of these things not like necessary as lumps of earth the earth but the principle a solidity of fluidity of temperature and of um wind of movement um space that we're occupying and then perhaps we'll just drop in the idea that there's consciousness at the end because we're not really quite sure what that is but we all have it so um that's what we're going to reflect on and that's all we're going to do is this this comes from another meditation where you do something more i won't i won't tell you what it is because you'll start doing it but the reflection is just to recognize that your body has this these different elements within it and you what we do in each phase of this meditation you try to recognize you may think a little bit about it and then see if you can experience it so the first one is going to be solidity so you're going to experience is it true do i have solidity in my body can i feel solid and it shouldn't be too difficult to recognize that you do okay um and i'll i'll just mention a few other things to reflect on because then if your mind wanders off to thinking about breakfast or something i'll just remind you that breakfast is also part of the element earth of solidity and and you're going to there'll be a relationship between you and your breakfast which i'll point out to you during the meditation so as always if you're going to meditate you need to kind of give yourself the message in a non-verbal way a non-sort of left-brained way that you're going to meditate so usually you do this by having a posture sometimes a place where you go to where you meditate and you set yourself up in that posture and what that's telling you i'm reminding you through um you know neuro rewiring if you like using this scientific view is that you're about to meditate so that's the preparation and the more you the more ritualized you make this the more powerful it would be um if you just sit down in the same old chair looking at the screen you'll just be sitting down in the same way looking at the screen so you might want to turn you might want to um i mean people often like candles particularly incense or maybe that's not so popular these days because people's breathing habits doesn't help but you have an idea this is i'm going to prepare for meditation i'm going to as best i can clear my mind of all the stuff that just comes dribbling in or flying in merging in and i'm just going to create a space where i can be without really doing very much like your body ideally isn't doing anything and um i'll be talking and you'll be listening so you'll be a bit of doing that in that you could close your eyes and shut out the any movements if you feel very sleepy at the moment you might just keep your eyes slightly open and unfocused so that the light which um it it also alters the physiology of our being through the autonomic system wakes us up a bit more so if you're feeling sleepy you might try just sitting with your eyes it's half open you often see buddha figures very rarely see a buddha figure with the eyes closed by the way but um we close our eyes basically to cut down the sensory input and then start feeling feelings in the body sensations in the body so you know you have a body and it's quite useful to kind of as it were scan down through your body you might start your head because often that's where we feel we're existing in our head with all the thoughts going on the brain being active input through the eyes input through the ears input through the nose the tongue all the sense most of the sensory inputs come through organs in the head so it's not surprising we feel as though we're in the head and our attention is in our head but of course we can feel things through the whole of our body from the crown of our head right down to the smallest toes and these can become very well they are very powerful it's a very powerful sense sense of feel [Music] so as you maybe move through your body down through your body feeling the weight of your body the heaviness of your body focusing perhaps mainly on that like your body has what in in um in engineering terms really or physical physics terms is called mass you have this whole mass of weight being poured down by the earth's gravitational force or gravity if not making sure people understand what gravity is but something's holding us down we can feel that we feel and feel that the different parts of the body being heavy and if you notice you're kind of resisting like if your shoulders you discover your shoulders are kind of not feeling heavy let them feel heavy so they kind of you let go of any resisting to gravity so you falling into allowing gravity force to make us more aware of our body and this first stage is the stage of solidity of earth and what we can reflect on here and we can also feel is that aspects of our body our bones particularly means flesh the skin the hair all the different parts of our body they're all quite relatively solid and so we have within us and it's part of our makeup this element of earth of solidity and so what we're aiming to do is kind of reflect in a kind of gentle sort of way without deeply analyzing this reflection you might even say over and over to yourself my body is solid it's made of the element earth or you may just be feeling that kind of solidity in terms of weight the fact that we're actually able to sit upright is due to the solidity of our skeleton and the solidity of our muscles all held together in the solidity of our skin and just feeling being aware of that for a few moments this last week just exploring what it how you can feel and be aware of this solidity okay and then we come to um we come to terms with the fact that we're solid and often when we think of solid we usually think of being fixed but it may be now we could just reflect on the fact that everything's changing and the solidity of our body comes about from partaking of the solidity of the world around us so some of us will after this session this morning go off and eat a meal we'll have our breakfast some of you will maybe have eaten already if you're in different parts different time zones and it's interesting just to reflect on the fact that food which also contains solid particles quite a lot of carbohydrates and other various things we don't need to we don't need to analyze food we just know that when we eat food it feels quite solid as opposed to drinking liquids eating chewing we're breaking up and then we're absorbing the solidity of the food we eat into the solidity of our body so that's why some people say what you eat is what you become so the very things you eat the particles eventually make up and replace the cells in the body and this is a process that's constantly happening and of course there's waste matter solid waste matter that is evacuated from the body no need it's no use to us anymore and then more solid matter comes in and we have another meal so we're living constantly with solidity but in a process that's not fixed that's constantly changing it's so interesting let me just reflect on that for a few moments and then we can move on to the next element which the label is water but it mainly means liquids although it's in it's good to remember that something like i think 70 percent of our body is made up of fluids of a base that's based on water basic composition of water so within our body which feels so solid and thick sometimes it's just like as it were sloshing around all this water this water element is fluids we may feel the fluid in my mouth in the form of saliva you may feel let's say there's a pulse can feel the pulse it tells us that blood is being pushed around the body from the heart that's pumping it and this blood's flowing toward every single part of the body so our nature is not just solid it's also very fluid it's like liquid flowing then we can remember that we taking in fluids all the time we have to and we're releasing fluids through the urine through our pores in our skin from all different places tears when we eat um some amount of fluid is passed through my body so this is coming in of the element water and flowing out of the element water and a substantial part of our body is made up of this and then we can move on to another element this is the element that has the label fire which is the experience of heat or temperature so we can experience this in our body in the form of feeling sometimes feeling a lack of heat i can feel for instance that my toes are quite cool whilst my hands are quite warm and our body has to be kept at a certain temperature very very narrow limits on the temperature of that body just a few degrees either way causes illness causing severe problems very very finely balanced system of absorbing heat from outside to keep the body warm creating heat inside through the process of breaking down food and there's a kind of combustion system in within the body as we digest food and produce heat within and sometimes there's too much heat in the body so the heat needs to flow out we have a system for that so the heat all around us and within us is kind of interchanging constantly that's the main reflection we can have we wear clothes in cold climates to keep the heat in so we don't lose it and in hot places we have fewer we don't need any clothes really to release the heat from the body okay maintain this balance temperature yes so we all know there's nothing fixed about heat sometimes we're warm sometimes we're cold we exercise the body a lot we create burn up a lot more fuel create more heat inside if we are unable to move very much sitting still we sometimes have to have external elements that warm us up or we sit outside in the sun in warm air so we're composed part of our composition is of this element of heat which we can call fire to give it a graphic right brain metaphorical form just when the mind wanders off just maybe ask yourself where do i feel warm and where do i feel cold and you can just focus on those sensations enjoy get too hot enjoy the parts that are cool get too cold enjoy the parts [Music] and just remembering that it's all changing all the time it's nothing permanent about heat nothing's still fixed there's nothing fixed about earth there's nothing fixed about water there's nothing fixed about fire all these elements constantly changing and then next we have the element that has the label air so we know we breathe in the air around us although we hardly ever remember that unless we're we go into a room that feels rather stuffy we kind of feel oh well we're going into the fresh air and then we remember we're breathing and experience the breath in that way sometimes it's called wind but it's just that movement of air yeah around us we can't exist without having air [Music] where there is no air you have to take the air with you to breathe but normally we're in the air the atmosphere of the earth full of air which we're breathing in removing certain elements of that air the oxygen which helps to provide the processes keeping us alive and the air flows out that's all we really need to focus on is this flow this like kind of wind of air flowing in and air flowing out there's quite a lot of movement in the body even when we're sitting still allowing this process to happen or causing this process to happen and there is something light it floats on top of water it's floating on top of the earth's surface right up to the outer reaches of gravitational field into space we're kind of swimming around in air all the time more fluid more fluid than liquid water this kind of freedom that we can experience when we contemplate the element air wind flow so in the early some of the early text of buddhism you find the buddha teaching this meditation of reflection on the elements he only uses four elements that in some of the texts earth water fire air the way we're doing this is just to reflect really on the impermanent or the ever-changing nature the sense of flow of all these elements which is telling us something about our cells that we are constantly changing that although we often can feel fixed and stuck and limited we can also when we allow ourselves to reflect on it experience it feel the ever-changing nature of our nature i can say that makes sense the ever-changing processes make up the nature of our being my body then we could act two more elements to this which you find in some text sometimes in later text the element of space is being aware that our body actually takes up space and when we move a limb we move that space around as it were we're moving through space so our body is never in one shape you could think of it as shape as well but you we're all occupying space we have my space sometimes that space extends out to the room [Music] to the house residence our space is very important to us but for this reflection all we need to do is recognize that we're in constant movement we're changing the shape changing space virtually the whole time we're sitting still we're just occupying space in a fairly still way when we're walking we're moving through space changing shape and again this is a another message that counteracts counteraxis sense of being fixed and stuck in this body in the sense of me and i mine that it's all changing it's all flowing freely like energy or wave the wave that is going through the water or the wave that's going through the air the vibration it's all flowing change c and then lastly we can reflect on the most complicated and most difficult in a way of all the elements and that's the element of mind or consciousness and we know that we have thoughts we should be even more aware after practicing being aware of constant changing nature of our thoughts our thoughts form our views and our views sometimes are stuck rigid but actually are constantly changing even our memories of the past are often interpretations of what happened and if you've ever told the story of your life more than once you probably notice that it changes a little bit in the second telling the third or the fourth or the fifth consciousness is whatever it is if it even is anything is the process of mental activity flow ideas emotions sometimes they don't have words they just have a strong feeling a feeling of being happy content or feeling irritation of anger and the object of reflecting on this is just to recognize that our mind is always changing that's very nature and it's this nature of mind that in a way constructs the world that we live in we see the world through the filters or our views of the labels we give things that help us to what's called recognize to see again an object tree house we know that's what it is and then we seem to have this need to fix it so that we can feel that we exist in this kind of solid entity because actually it's all changing it's all flowing quite freely it's energy and the great message from all this is that whatever we are can be changed to something more wonderful something more something better than what we already have maybe that's the main thing the main message of this meditation is to convince ourselves you know more what you know gilchrist would call a right brain way without having to analyze and think it all through or just know more clearly more fully that everything is flowing and changing and to some degree we have control we can change and act and think and speak in ways that will assist us in becoming more more beautiful more creative more kind more loving more aware of the true nature of things and even more strangely we have this ability to be aware of being aware so just ending this meditation we might just really realize or just reflect on that constant nature of our flow flow of life that's taking place within us is also happening all around us and we're part of everything we're not just a little speck in a universe speck of nothing we are part of the whole flow of the hebrew changing nature of life so we call this in english nature and that is its nature the life is flowing changing and it can be very affirming to realize this that we are part kind of part of everything and if we were to use the name of a book called in love with the world this is in a way what we're in love with in love with this ever-changing nature of life [Music] so hopefully every time you take a glass of water and you drink it you'll be reminded of flow it's flowing through you foreign now just by the way this is a meditation that is part of a traditional buddhist practice um which i've just carved off part of it like half of it really the reflection um but i find it very helpful way of um reflecting on the body which is the advice the buddha gives in developing mindfulness this first stage of awakening being aware of your body so it's a different way of being aware of your body of um being aware of this constant change and all the different elements that make up our being [Music] it includes the mind if you use the six elements so i don't know if there are any questions or any comments coming through nick uh so annie's saying thank you very inspiring teaching and meditation um sally's asking about the book um in love with the world okay yeah um maybe i could just mention that there's a book by a um tibetans quite quite a young man but it was a young man you can find quite a lot of interviews with him um he's a tibetan rinpoche called mingya and he wrote this book in love with the world which um i think it was mentioned in one of the interviews it is it's his journey of leaving a monastery um actually just kind of disappears from the monastery story and then he has a near-death experience and at the end of it he kind of realizes that actually well i won't tell you too much about it but the um the title is intriguing in love with the world and um it kind of it's a very easy read and very um you know the near-death experience he has and the way he actually talks about these elements in the um in the book and um what happens in at the time of near death to these elements so if you wanted to explore that more you just google in love with the world or you find the um the author's name it's um i don't remember he wrote it as with a co-author but his name is um [Music] [Music] is saying uh i realized what a relief it is to not be fixed not to be fixed it's it's kind of kind of disconcerting as well not being fixed because you think where am i you know you kind of can lose a sense of who you are but sometimes the wonderful thing in dreams you can you when you when you're asleep you you're um everything can be less fixed and much more flowing and amazing maybe not so much in nightmares but in the nice dreams so peter is saying it's also true that the vast majority of cells and atoms are made up out of space is there any further reflection on that well my reflection would be don't reflect on it because you kind of um end up analog you know you do this left brain thing of analyzing it all into its constituent parts and actually it's a model you know atoms and molecules and space is a kind of model that you can't um you can't see you can't experience so it's kind of it tells you what how things operate and how they can be manipulated as well so that's very very useful in creating things in the world making things happen but i think from the perspective of trying to understand consciousness and how we're interacting with the world it's good to remember that [Music] well science particularly that kind of science is using models and not to take the models for complete reality otherwise you just think that there are these little things whizzing around each other and later science kind of explains it's not really like that it's it's got all sorts of strange laws at work which go outside of that model so i i find i mean if you're particularly interested in physics then of course explore it but from the point of view of coming closer to an understanding of mind it's not always useful to try to to analyze and find connections between these kind of scientific models that would be my advice my reflection so you ask for further reflections on this my further reflection others will have other reflections the katrina's saying i'm preparing to visit the body of my uncle who's just passed uh was interesting to contemplate that he's still occupying space but not moving and to contemplate his awareness slash consciousness yeah yeah well that's yeah obviously if you're with someone who dies you do see the elements disappearing they stop drinking the mouth becomes dry and the temperature of the body eventually dissolves and the last thing to go is that is the body and of course if you sat long enough watching the body you would notice the body changing it would start dissolving in what we would call a very unpleasant way and that is a very traditional buddhist reflection quite an advanced one because it can be very depressing and not usually very helpful for people in the west to to do that but um being with someone who's dying and just being able to hold that and experience it and just remembering that it's just nature it's just what happens it's natural and the it's the end of one process in the beginning and this is you know something that um i think the work of penny satori kind of helps us to understand it's the beginning of something else so every ending has a beginning coming with it there's a kind of something moving between the two they're not like separate fixed entities that when you when you're reflecting more and more on flow you realize that even trying to find when something begins and when something actually ends is impossible you you you try to get closer and closer to the point of when did this start and when did it end and you realize there's a kind of little moment before that and if you if you've got that kind of mind that reflects in that way i mean i've tried to do that and the message that um well all the messages that we need is that things are just flowing into one sort of phase of being into another phase and for practical purposes which buddhism is extremely practical is that it's what's happening right now that's what's important what's happening right now is one thing is flowing into another thing your mood is changing your body needs are changing your feelings in your body are changing everything's changing and it's disconcerting in a way because you think i've got no i wouldn't just have it still it's not like this so if you can kind of go with the flow as i say um get into the groove of the flow of things it's just wonderful it's like really letting yourself go into music is the sort of thing that comes to my mind if you can really let yourself go into music that seems to be you have a certain sort of um it's difficult to describe really but the sort of music that allows you to flow with it into it you kind of you experience this new type of consciousness and it's really exciting you know we as you discover more and more new things life becomes incredibly exciting and it's one of the great things about getting old not that many things that are good about the physical body getting old but the fact that you can experience even more because you know more there's no end to things that you can explore and um and particularly in the mind it's just totally what amazing wonderful things no wonder was in love with the world it's in love with life being alive of course we don't always feel like that and then we feel bad that we're not feeling like that and then that kind of has a downward spiral into what's called depression because everything's being pressed down and but if one can catch that happening early enough and just remembering actually well i don't need to be going down i don't need to keep ruminating going over and over these things but just maybe just experiencing going having a nice cup of tea or coffee or a nice glass of water or something and sit in the sunshine if it's sunny or going for a walk in the rain if it's raining and just experience all the different aspects of life some kind of kind of nice message last night so alma is asking in a regular practice how often do you recommend doing this kind of meditation um well i doubt very much if i know anyone who does this meditation actually in the way i taught it um i've never i just kind of made it up actually so um but um i think what's probably more important personally you you could do this formally we're doing it in a formal way breaking into six stages and reflecting on that and it actually is also has another aspect where you're reflecting on the fact one day it's all going to end and change and it's not really very useful to do that if you're new to meditating or if you don't have a very strong sense of self-worth and feel good about yourself so what's probably more important is learning the art of reflecting when you're not meditating you know so um like the image that comes to my mind is like um i take a train i go to paris i sit outside in the sunshine with a cup of coffee watching people going by and i'm reflecting it's all changing the people are just walking by and my coffee is disappearing and i'm feeling different and you can have that kind of reflection anywhere anytime of course if you're very busy all the time and doing all the things that you have to do and you're kind of a bit frenetic about it you won't have the opportunity to practice reflecting but if you start training yourself and prioritizing this wonderful [Music] this wonderful thing we have of being able to reflect then um you need the space to do it and it doesn't cost anything i mean you might have a cup of coffee which costs something just so that you've got an excuse for sitting out in someone's cafe using their chair and so on you i i remember once i was thinking um you often need an excuse for sitting doing nothing and um although i as a buddhist i wouldn't be a fisherman i did once think of buying a rod and a fishing stool and sitting on a riverbank without a hook fishing because it kind of gave me permission to do nothing just being there doing absolutely nothing and if people watched me if i was worried about people what they think of me i think oh he's a fisherman and actually i wasn't i was just uh i was just sitting there rod in my hand reflecting on the ever-changing nature of things around me so what i learned from that is is that actually we don't give ourselves permission we don't believe in the importance of just doing nothing of just we're not really doing nothing we are doing something we're just sitting and allowing the mind to reflect on things so there's a very positive thing to reflect on that is life all around us constantly changing we're constantly changing and we have some um some ability to make trans transform that change into becoming more and that's that's the whole process really of um certainly the fundamental principle of buddhism is to become more and more in in the sense of becoming more and more of a human being kinder more friendly more generous etc sorry i might segue there onto another little teaching but uh i can't remember what the question was that's it so peter says i often find it challenging to sit in reflection as i feel i either need to be doing something else or um his mood can spiral down a bit just can you say the last bit didn't quite hear that yeah so he he says he often finds a challenging system reflection he feels he either needs to be doing something else or his mood can spiral down a bit yeah yeah um well if you if that happens to you then probably reflecting um it may not be always so easy except when you feel you you feel like you've got more ability to be in control of where the reflection goes um but actually when you're when you're watching that happening you're reflecting on it and if you get to that point where you feel as though you're dropping into an old habit of spiraling spiraling down into you know into kind of a mindset that's unhelpful then it's probably good to stop reflecting and just do something you go for a walk or move or take up some activity so you you you stop it happening and um i guess what the training would be is just you practice that more and more until you can change your habit if it is a habit and it may be it goes into the whole area of kind of health care which is quite complex and complicated so i i don't really want to say too much about it because i'm not a it's not my qualifications but um from the point of view of reflecting if you can see if you can be aware of that happening you are reflecting actually at that moment and that's good to give yourself a pat on the shoulder about and i think okay now i'm going to stop reflecting and i'm going to do something because carrying on in this way i'm going to stop reflecting you'll fall into a kind of downward spiral which might be helpful and it happens to all of us actually we we might just be sitting there reflecting and then the obvious one for me would be when you think of someone who's done something to you like the builder who might have ripped you off for doing a job for you and you just why did i let that happen and i'm so stupid and you know just that you reflect in a different sort of way which is totally unhelpful and the reflection then should be is like oh look i'm reflecting about the builder that kind of did something to me and um i'm going to go down the go down the tubes here if i carry on in this way so i'm going to stop and that's you know how to work with that kind of situation which we i'm sure we all have from time to time we came to ruminating in that way and uh you know probably at the moment if we're watching the news a lot we'll be reflecting on the and what's happening in ukraine and that can be kick off a support with downward sort of depressive negative sort of way of thinking about things so there's no more questions but there's a quote from lisa a zen quote that she's uh in uh sitting quietly doing nothing spring comes and the grass grows by itself oh what a wonderful little saying yeah first maybe that's something put in the um if you could put that in the chat we could all print it out and pin it to the fridge and walk by every day and remind ourselves of what can happen when you sit doing nothing thank you for sharing that so elise is also talking here about um ki gong i think it is um she's saying that she is currently doing it with her students and exploring the idea of body and nature's flow and how this can help with the fixities of the mind she definitely recommends doing it to embody these ideas yeah yeah certainly when you do chi kung you can experience the sort of energy flowing through your body doing well a lot of other movements that allow you to be aware of more internal um more subtle um activities or things taking place and um that's a that's a kind of an interesting way of reflecting actually because it kind of is still reflecting but it's not so sort of conceptual reflecting something that you're partaking of and doing which will be sending giving you knowledge really allowing knowledge to be evoked within you and coming closer to what life is so yeah you can't be sitting all the time the body's not really designed to be still for too much i can see there's someone in i think someone here told me that the bodies are designed to move and the best thing to do is move them otherwise you kind of lose the ability to move them so when you're moving the body you can be experiencing the flow of energy in a kind of kinesthetic way feeling way have we done it for time i think we're more or less running out i just wanted to mention um sorry if i haven't finished all the questions but um you could ask um come back and ask tomorrow um i just wanted to say that um there will be an opportunity to partake of uh for those people that can get to addistana there's an event beginning a long weekend um i think it's called change yourself to change the world is that right nick change your mind change the world and even if you you can't make it to addistana it's also online it's a hybrid okay brilliant that's really well wonderful and there's a longer one a longer retreat at the end of august which i think is also going to be a hybrid isn't it but we're hoping you know a term a couple of hundred people will come to a big event with um all the i think the main teachers would be there be available to meet and i'll be there supporting it and it will be a wonderful event and if you can't get to addis style you can join online so i think that's probably it for today probably ready you you've all been sitting there for rather a long time i've been sitting here for a long time i think it's time we all get up move and wiggle our bodies around and uh we do that as we say goodbye so um i'm i'm gonna carry on sitting for a moment but you can do it and uh or you can just turn your camera off and just go so come you everyone if you want nick thank you so much thank you thank you so much hi everyone thanks so much around bye thank you

Channel: Adhisthana Triratna

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Id: aOWHvgHzQ_0

Length: 86min 45sec (5205 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 10 2022