Matthieu Ricard - The Art of Meditation

and I must have just come from Davos Economic Forum not a place where you would expect to find Buddhist monks but the point is is that unless we bring a more altruistic society this is no more a luxury this is absolute necessity so how to do that now there is the point is to find the connection between the individual transformation and cultural change that's really the challenge so it's somehow it has to start with individual changing you know society the building blocks of society are made of individuals and then it has to expand in some way to individual contagion to change of IDs to cultural shift to evolution of cultures so that it's not just someone in this little bubble try to become more altruistic and that's it anyway that's the heart of meditation as I understand it because it's also linked with an understanding of reality the understanding of interdependence and how in a way if you pull in the spider web if you put a little bit something in the corner the whole thing sort of change so we had to contribute to that to that change so now thinking that in mind that the interconnection between the individual change and society change when it comes to actual meditation most people wanting meditation is anything necessary in life and it has to do with for many reasons that's to do with the word itself that's somehow associated with oriental and sort of exotic sort of perceptions and also the ideal why should I take out on 20 precious minute of my life to to just look at my novel and sort of look at loss in my toes when I could do something useful or at least what I need to do and have to do so in a way there is a also a lot of cliches about meditation or meditation that means you need to blank out your mind and relax so that's kind of assimilated to a nice sort of relaxation session where you get a little bit of your stress and then start all over again so I think there is a lot of misunderstanding so I really really the question would should be why should we bother what's the point of even doing something remotely looking like meditation and so knowing that meditation is about training the mind changing your way you experienced the outer circumstances of the world and your inner world as of emotions and so forth why should we bother I have read an article in such a visual nature of someone arguing that those things are utterly unnecessary evolution has brought us to a certain point where we learn enough more than enough things by just interacting with the world from the moment we are born that's all we need every other staff is totally artificial well we could say to that you are not born knowing how to read and write to ride a bicycle to play chess to play tennis and play Mozart that's clear there have been a huge amount of training effort sustained discipline in acquiring those skills now we absolutely agree on that nobody minds even we don't always appreciate it go to school for number of years to have a professional training and if we are interested in playing a musical instrument of becoming an athlete to spend the necessary effort for did we do that because we see had the potential benefit for it for our health for our pleasure for our flourishing and therefore we see this is worth doing it's kind of strange that we assume that basic human qualities like peace of mind loving kindness compassion resilience emotional balance that they will be at the optimal state just like that because we wishes so there will be sort of the normal state like someone who has never trained in the piano who has never runs systematically so that they could eventually run a marathon yes we know how to work we can run a little bit but this is far from expressing the whole potential we have maybe it's 10% of that potential so would it be true exactly the same for the mind and possibly one of our drama is that reversely underestimate the power of transformation of the mind of actualizing another 90% of that potential so why should we bother I think the first question is what is the present state in our life can we say I met someone will told me no I would not change anything in my life everything is absolutely fine I'm totally enjoying it maybe but is it really honestly true is there anything we mean how can we say that there's not something that we could could be more optimal that so-called normal state is of course shared by or but maybe second of pandemic normal is nursing meanness is a mean optimal so is there nothing that we feel that we could improve we could be more compassionate a little more peace of mind so some of the arguments sometimes it's spooty said well you know that's what makes me a special individual and different from someone else as the richness of life to have some time terrible crisis of jealousy or something we thought that will be boring we'll all be the same no Goethe wrote that three days of uninterrupted happiness will be unbearable it's always the same and suffering is know this intensity of always changing is so colorful but no I think that's a very bits of a spacious argument so honestly nobody wakes up in the morning thinking may suffer the whole day or possible my whole life we aspire to be free from suffering to find some happiness they are outer and inner conditions to that the aquatic condition we ought to improve them as much as possible but if we ignore the way our mind experiences that the way our mind translate the outer condition in happiness or misery we know the fact that our state of man can vary easily eclipses the outer condition we can be miserable in seemingly perfect paradise we can have strength of mind joy of being alive even the condition that seems to be difficult we know all that and yet that's sort of spoiled right of the mind we just do basically nothing to improve the way it functions so honestly I think it seems that it is desirable to develop certain skills and certain quality that we do have the potential for now the real question is it possible or not it might be so much that our trades are so in granite no 2 in terms of genetics of the experience of early life of the circunstances that constrain our way of life that this very little margin for changing and maybe you know things like a nagging jealousy or obsession or spontaneous anger are so much in the fabric of what you call human nature human mind that to get rid of those or to those afflictive paths will be like try to destroy part of ourself and that will not work so that's a real question so first of all I think the idea is yes those are part of human nature we all know what is what jealousy is we all know what anger and irritation and arrogance and obsessive desire can be but you need there's many way to be part of something you could be part of something intrinsically like maybe the red dye of this cloud and then to get rid of it you possibly have to destroy or if you take a glass of water imagine there's the water and this in this glass h2o I could put some cyanide and if I drink it at the end of the conference or they could be medicine and it is medicinal water but h2o didn't change it didn't become poisonous didn't become medicinal it's not change so what about the mind are those mental factors of anger jealousy and so forth mental construct that comes to many causes and condition and circumstances but at which level are the intrinsic or not to our basic experience and I think here the contemplative approach can help us solve that problem if you think of any mental event whether it's an emotion reasoning a memory imagination of the future there is something this is the most common denominator is just to be aware the faculty to know the basic cognitive faculty that's different from this class that doesn't know anything is zero in terms of cognition so now if you think of what is cognition it's little bit like light that allows you to perceive the whole range of phenomena outer and inner phenomena but what is the quality required of light to be to do so it it's not modified but what it lights up otherwise no if light was making dirty everything it shines upon everything will appear as dirty but if you shined a tall slag on the heap of garbage doesn't become dirty if you shine it on a heap of gold doesn't become expensive or precious or whatever it reveals it so the basic cognitive faculty the most fundamental aspect of consciousness of awareness is to precisely allow everything else but that itself no more than h2o is corrupted by poison or enhanced by medicine this is just the most fundamental aspect of consciousness to give the last quick example a mirror why is mirrors something is a kind of nice special object because it can reflect indefinite number of faces and things like that now imagine that each face would belong to the mirror stick to the mirror pen at the mirror after a few phases you will have to throw the mirror and get a new one we feel off a know angry face smiling face is useless so the face reflects but it's not part of the mirror doesn't stay the mirror allows that so likewise from the contemplative perspective if you look deep within behind the screen of thought there is this luminous primal quality of consciousness that is undetermined that's the foundation for trusting that you could modify the various constant condition that brings about mental construct emotions and so forth so that's the fundamental notion of mind training potential for it now then what will be the subject of training it will be to transform the way we experience things not to be the slave of a constant chain of thoughts rumination hopes and fears endless when people sit for the first time to meditate sometime they say oh I have so much thought then when I don't meditate basically they just become aware of the extent of the catastrophe we have told spinning from morning till evening non-stop and we are very little we just follow after them and sweat by them and list it without the slightest control now when we did bring this idea of controlling the mind people say oh no no it's like putting the man in shackles I don't want that I want to be free but what this freedom means to do anything that comes through your mind that's doesn't look like freedom to me since might be the slave of every thought now to give an image that might help suppose you are a sailor at sea and you want to go somewhere so if freedom is to do anything that comes it's pond spontaneously then freedom would means let the boat drift wherever the wind and the current blows that's freedom isn't it but isn't it taking the hems ringing the sails and navigating where you want to go the real freedom of what at going where you decided to go that means being in charge of the boat being master of the board so true mastery of the man is freedom of the mind otherwise you are slave by your thoughts that being sort of said then how do you achieve that well first of all as you will notice when we begin to meditate the man is really like a restless monkey now imagine a restless monkey that is tied up with ten or twelve ropes and you want to free that monkey or monkey host to be free but it jumps so much that you can't even under one single node so how to help you have to come the monkey not by knocking the monkey on this head but let it rest a little bit so that you can untie the knots bit by bit and neck and freedom so that's that's why as the initial tool of meditation whatever you want to cultivate later on whether it's compassion no emotional balance or dealing with your emotions you need to have this relative calmness and stubbornness and clarity of mind as it as a necessary tool so it's not just anything your mind is not going to work thoughts out there anyway what can you start to block them when they already there but it's really at least relative in a calm more clarity more stability so that you can use that to then cultivate something like loving-kindness and actually the words the Eastern world like Bhuvana in sanskrit or Gomi in tibetan that are usually translated as meditation I really do mean to become familiar with something familiar with a new way of being familiar with a new skill like loving kindness familiar with the basic understanding of how the mind works and to cultivate those qualities so there's a process so if the basis has to have at least a flexible tool there are basic techniques to achieve that based on attention increasing your mindfulness of moment to moment and so there's many ways in the in the Buddhist room there are other traditional so teaching mindfulness and vigilance and being in the present moment but one very simple one is to take a sort of attention that is subtle enough that you will notice if you are distracted if you say I'm going to concentrate on a flashing red light you could still sort of notice it but while your mind is wandering because it's so obvious imagine now that you are trying to concentrate on the coming and going of your breath it's something automatic that normally we don't pay attention to now if you start to add pay attention to the feeling of some of the air coming out of the nostril and then the bread coming and then it stops and then you're coming in or the movement of your belly or your lungs there's a sensation related to that and you can place your mind upon that sensation and just try to be mindful of noticing the bread is coming out by this coming in that was very simple but if you distracted then that's all gone it's not like a flashing light so you can easily sort of check whether your mind is there or not so when you know when you're these have been distracted you just bring it back so this using a natural process that always with you is a useful tool to increase this Faculty of mindfulness to what's happening now it could be done the same with sensations whatever you feel in your body sensation of heat and cold of pain or comfort it could be with a different thing you hear that the nose of this projector or something provided you are mindful of it in the present moment that's your mindfulness you are not just constantly distracted so once we have achieve some skill and that then we can use that to then cultivate other quality that we've them worth cultivating like loving-kindness or how to deal better with the arising of of afflictive and disturbing emotions so take the example of loving-kindness we all have feelings from time to time of unconditional love for someone usually it lasts a certain time maybe 10 15 seconds and then soon some other thoughts come in and out so we don't sit with that for 20 minutes that doesn't happen as we run on the bicycle in our flat 2 to 20 minutes of exercise so what about instead of those 15 seconds is we were proposed idli bringing in the mind a feeling of unconditional love for someone from whom we have no difficulty to feel so whether it's a child or someone very dear and when this feeling is very vivid what cognitively and emotionally then we just keep on no cheering it FireWire not just a few seconds but maybe 10 minutes maybe more when you start to decline a little bit or to become a bit more vague or distracted we just revive it nurture it sustain it now if you do that for 20 minutes that would make a difference it's completely different that doing it for 15 seconds in the same way that playing the piano for 20 minutes is a different result than playing it for a minute so bored from the experiential side to do that regularly will bring a to lasting change after a while and from the neuroscience today we're not going to go too much on that side but the notion of brain plasticity neuroplasticity is that when you expose regularly for a certain time to novelty something new that you are not doing before or not experiencing before that what was going to bring lasting change in the brain function and after a month you can always see a difference you can see difference in the brain you can this difference in the level of stress you can see difference in your immune system so today I'm not going to speak about that but both the brain function and even the health and the immune system will be changed but that's requires perseverance just like if you want your apartment plans to grow nicely you are going to put a little water every day and not just a bucket once a month so regularity and some duration is what makes the difference so it might be consider as boring but what does that mean it's a process of learning so that is to do with cultivating qualities now how can we then use that skill to improve the quality of every moment that we live so let's take examples of what often undermined this experience of well-being or happiness or flourishing usually start destructive emotions you are swayed by anger nagged by jealousy or no anxiety is filling up your mind so you feel you are quite powerless about those states of mine you will rather do without it you know if we had said today we'll spend two hours cultivating jealousy I'm not sure you would have joined now if you speak of cultivating loving-kindness seems more appealing isn't it whole weekend on jealousy so what so even though we say what is human nature does the richness of our you know array of emotions yet somehow we would not like to be always under the sway of jealousy so now but when they come we sort of powerlessly know taken by that it fills our mind we are one with jealousy or one with anxiety so how can we proceed how the meditative experience can help us to deal better with that so that's where the notion of awareness and mindfulness comes into the picture even you are taken by quite some occupation which makes you anxious the mind that always has the Faculty to be aware of it to watch that this is an innate Faculty of the mind no matter what if you just step a little bit and look you can look at your with the eye of the mind of course you can look at your experience as someone will watch fired is that burns if you think of that what is aware of anger is not angry it's aware what is saying aware of anxiety is not anxious is aware so it is not actually tinted by anxiety or anger so now you instead of being anger all over the place you have anger and a space of mindfulness and if you persevere doing so what naturally happened that's the matter of experience is the more you maintain that awareness of the off or the anger or the anxiety has a tendency to melt down it's just like if you stop adding wood to a fire it will burn but not for very long so naturally it will when it will vanish away doing so you avoided two sort of pitfalls one is to try just to suppress it suppressing means keeping it intact somewhere like a time bomb this doesn't do any good if the causes are not being remarried the thing is still there all you blow it away like if it's anger that's also doesn't help very much not for you not for others and all studies show that it's just increase your tendency to anger but now you have dealt in an intelligent way the thing the emotion came up just watch it with mindfulness it vanished the way you dealt success successfully with that episode and by doing so repeatedly you build up a capacity so that you are less vulnerable to that that means it will take more for you to be submerged by anxiety so it will eventually come less often less strong and you can imagine a time where simply like things like hatred are just normal part of your mental landscape and that's the result of a process of familiarization so that is true sign of transformation not some mystical sudden meditative experiences that might be like nice fireworks but doesn't result in too deep change so this baseline of your understanding of happiness and suffering of your way you react to emotions that will be changed by time so it seems it's worth now people will say well you know we don't have time I always find this little bit strange to say that and and well it's like you say you go to a doctor and the doctor said look you know you got your condition not so good I would advise that you do this and that because you are stressed and you're something really wrong with you and please do this treatment and you say no doctor you know I can do that now first I feel quite weak and I'm quite stressed and I don't have any time so I will do all that when I'm a multi again and everything is fine because you need the treatment when you need it so anyway if something like twenty minutes a day of learning how to reach this more optimal state of mind that give you the resources to deal with everything else the ups and downs of life modify the quality of the 23 hours and 30 minutes that left including your sleep sometime it seems they're wordy way of spending time that's why we do exercise fitness we know how to benefit for health so that's the sort of foundation ideas of of mind training or meditation and you can apply that to emotional awareness the way to deal with emotion developing attention developing emotional balance more inner strength and know the faculty to recognize emotion as they arise to deal with them in an intelligent way so that the sort of undo themself as they arise and not overwhelm you so all these little by little dealing with pain physical pain and others will definitely lead with the healthier state of mind a more balanced state of mind and so it seems that possibly one of our drama of all times is to vastly underestimate the power of transformation of mind so that's a you know in the nutshell what meditation can be and it's just too in a way demystify it without making a sort of meditation light version but seeing that is something that really is concerned because we all have a mind and we will have to deal with that spotlight of the mind and the result is really a state of a baseline of relative happiness or constant misery so it's at the heart of the quality of our experience and also the heart of the quality or how will relate to others I mean if you're overly preoccupied and vulnerable tendency is to withdraw in the bubble of ego and self to take care of that if you have this increased sense of confidence and less vulnerability you're not going to become indifferent you are going to be fully ready actually to open to others because you don't fit under tread you don't feel this vulnerability so in a way altruism and compassion goes with some kind of fearlessness and that fearlessness does come from knowing that well basically no matter what you are going to refine and find inwardly but then you can face the world and you can be at the service of others in a much better way

Channel: RSA

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Keywords: Matthieu Ricard, philosophy, meditation, well-being, well being, happiest man, happy, rsa, the rsa, royal society of arts, buddhist, meditate, brain, monk, the art of meditation

Id: iZwnXj0Ck1k

Length: 27min 23sec (1643 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2010