A Meditator's Peace

0:00 Okay, so when it comes to meditation, what is it? Report an error in the passage at 0:00 Highlight the passage at 0:00

0:11 It's actually quite a simple idea. It's about putting yourself in a position where you can just let go of the world, in a sense. I mean, when you're sitting in a meditation posture, And when you're not getting involved in this world, you tend to kind of shut off your mind from what is happening outside. Report an error in the passage at 0:11 Highlight the passage at 0:11

0:41 And what you do is you start to look within and you start to have a look at your inner world to see what is happening. And one of the lovely things that you come across that happens in your mind Report an error in the passage at 0:41 Highlight the passage at 0:41

1:29 And in a sense, our minds are always stimulated. And when the mind is stimulated, it's actually kind of a little bit stressful. Report an error in the passage at 1:29 Highlight the passage at 1:29

1:40 That's what I was thinking about. Recently, I was thinking about, is the human mind in a constant state of stress? Report an error in the passage at 1:40 Highlight the passage at 1:40

1:55 We always tend to worry about something. stressful, you know, you know. Report an error in the passage at 1:55 Highlight the passage at 1:55

1:52 stress. Report an error in the passage at 1:52 Highlight the passage at 1:52

1:58 We're thinking about something or we're trying to solve a problem or even looking after the house or something like that. What is happening in the mind? Is there some sort of stress happening there? And I think, I don't know if anybody's looked into it, but I think the mind is kind of like, in a sense, stressful, stressed throughout the day. Report an error in the passage at 1:58 Highlight the passage at 1:58

2:56 What can I do to give myself a break? from from the world that I live in from the world of busyness from the world of doing stuff and the answer to that is trying to get involved with a meditation practice and the meditation practice is basically A practice where we can separate ourselves from our busy minds. We can separate ourselves from our doing minds. Report an error in the passage at 2:56 Highlight the passage at 2:56

3:37 It's one of these activities that we can put aside for half an hour and just be in the moment. And being in the moment, trying to empty out the mind because Report an error in the passage at 3:37 Highlight the passage at 3:37

3:55 The meditation posture, closing your eyes, gives you that opportunity to do nothing. And that's one of the wonderful things about the mind, is its ability to do nothing. Report an error in the passage at 3:55 Highlight the passage at 3:55

4:26 The benefits of doing nothing, what does that give us as human beings? Report an error in the passage at 4:26 Highlight the passage at 4:26

4:36 One of the things as meditators or as people who want to try new techniques to get some sort of result to help them improve their lives. Report an error in the passage at 4:36 Highlight the passage at 4:36

4:51 When you think about meditation, how does meditation... beings. Report an error in the passage at 4:51 Highlight the passage at 4:51

4:55 How is it going to help me with my life? And there is something about developing a skill of doing nothing. So you're sitting peacefully, you're learning how to calm your mind down, you're learning how to let go of that thinking mind, so you can get your mind to a point where there's nothing much happening. Report an error in the passage at 4:55 Highlight the passage at 4:55

5:24 And in a sense, That is how we meditate, or in a sense, that is the goal of meditation, is to allow the mind to find its way to a point where the thinking subsides. Report an error in the passage at 5:24 Highlight the passage at 5:24

5:42 And sometimes you ask, oh, what's the benefit? How is that going to add to my life? Having this experience of a mind that doesn't think too much. Report an error in the passage at 5:42 Highlight the passage at 5:42

5:56 And I think that's the... I think that's the part that we understand as meditators, how having a quiet mind can kind of permeate into our lives and affect it positively. So yes, we're here to learn how to meditate, but we're also here to get some sort of positive effect that can help us in our lives. So one of the things that I've learned over the years is as people who learn how to meditate, what you're developing is a peaceful mind. Report an error in the passage at 5:56 Highlight the passage at 5:56

6:41 And sometimes when I think about, you know, when you think about a peaceful mind, what do you think of? What image comes to your mind or what concept or what idea, you know? Sometimes when I think of the word peaceful, And trying to match it up with the experience of having a peaceful mind. It doesn't really describe it. It's not a very accurate description. Report an error in the passage at 6:41 Highlight the passage at 6:41

7:09 Because what is peacefulness? Like a peaceful walk through the park. Or the sun is setting and it's peaceful. It is nice. There is a sense of relaxation. relaxation but The peace that I'm talking about is something that which is felt from within and it's seen from within. Like the peace that we talk about, like say a peace from a sunset, that's like a peace that comes from the eyes. Report an error in the passage at 7:09 Highlight the passage at 7:09

7:43 You know, you need to see it and then you have some sort of feeling and you think that's peaceful. Or you go through the park, you will go for a walk through the park and you're just trekking along. Report an error in the passage at 7:43 Highlight the passage at 7:43

8:28 Because there is also a peace that can be found there. So when we think about it, we try to look for peace in different places. Sometimes we go to the pub. Do you find peace in the pub? No. Sometimes, where else do you go to look for peace? At the beach. You want a nice peaceful time? Yeah, sometimes. Or you go on a holiday, it's nice and relaxing and maybe it is peaceful. Report an error in the passage at 8:28 Highlight the passage at 8:28

9:00 So, you know, there's different ways, different places that we can go to to find peace. But the peace that we're trying to allow you to find for yourself is the peace that comes from the meditation practice. And it's the peace that comes from within. It's the peace that comes from within. And it's like, you kind of feel it, you kind of... Report an error in the passage at 9:00 Highlight the passage at 9:00

9:32 Be it you're becoming a more peaceful being after a while, after learning how to meditate. And the peacefulness that I talk about is generated from a mind which has learned how to quiet down when we are meditating. Report an error in the passage at 9:32 Highlight the passage at 9:32

9:57 And when we talk about the benefits that it can give us, In our daily life is that we know, we've learnt how to develop this quality of peace within us through the meditation. And we can take this quality of peace into our lives, into different situations. Take for example, you go to work or something like that. Report an error in the passage at 9:57 Highlight the passage at 9:57

10:27 And before you learn how to meditate, before you learn how to become peaceful, you kind of react. Report an error in the passage at 10:27 Highlight the passage at 10:27

11:03 to make peace or be at peace. So this is how the meditation practice helps us in our daily lives. And it's like one of the many benefits that we can get from it. So, so, so... Report an error in the passage at 11:03 Highlight the passage at 11:03

11:31 so so just like just trying to explain to you Report an error in the passage at 11:31 Highlight the passage at 11:31

11:38 How do we meditate? What do we do? Report an error in the passage at 11:38 Highlight the passage at 11:38

11:49 The whole idea of the meditation practice is to be able to get yourself into a really relaxed state. A really relaxation state. Starting from your body. The way you see it. How are you sitting? Is the chair comfortable? Can you sit comfortably for like 20-30 minutes? So you kind of calm the body down in that manner. Report an error in the passage at 11:49 Highlight the passage at 11:49

12:20 And then when you're meditating, what we do is we close our eyes. We close our eyes and we're just being here. It's kind of learning how to be in the moment. You know, without fidgeting. Report an error in the passage at 12:20 Highlight the passage at 12:20

13:12 What we teach here is that we don't really teach a method. We don't tell you to be in the present moment. We don't tell you to watch the breath. We don't tell you to crush the mind to stop the thinking. All we ask of the meditators here is to just be observant. Just to observe. And just to know, just to know whatever is happening in your mind at this moment. And the idea of, and then you might ask, okay, how do I calm the mind down? Report an error in the passage at 13:12 Highlight the passage at 13:12

13:55 So the idea of meditation is to be able to just step back. Just like, just imagine just stepping back away from your thoughts. Report an error in the passage at 13:55 Highlight the passage at 13:55

14:08 And the further you kind of step back, You can allow the thoughts to just have their play. Do whatever they want to do. But because you're not involved with the thinking, the thinking kind of slows down. It slows down, it becomes less loud, and it disappears. So this is something that I'm trying to get you to understand. Report an error in the passage at 14:08 Highlight the passage at 14:08

14:36 And then the other approach is, say when you're meditating, Report an error in the passage at 14:36 Highlight the passage at 14:36

15:11 Do work, but it's kind of hard for the mind to sustain the attention on something which it doesn't really find interesting. That's why people have difficulties with watching the breath. The breath is coming in, coming out, coming in, coming out. It sounds very easy, but it's a difficult thing to do because it's not interesting. Report an error in the passage at 15:11 Highlight the passage at 15:11

15:33 And on the other hand, people can spend a couple of hours watching a movie. without without losing focus why is that is because they find it interesting Report an error in the passage at 15:33 Highlight the passage at 15:33

15:48 And it's the same with the activities that you like to do during your day, whether you like to cook, whether you like to garden, whether you like to work. When you find something interesting you can put So that's why as people who come along in this meditation path find difficulty When it comes to watching the breath, it's because it's not interesting enough. But besides, so it's not interesting enough, but at the same time, we can use the breath as a tool, as a tool to take our attention away from the thoughts and put it on something else. Report an error in the passage at 15:48 Highlight the passage at 15:48

16:33 Something neutral, something that doesn't cause stress. Something that doesn't cause any drama. The breath has never caused anybody drama or caused anybody stress. So sometimes, as we're meditating, a nice skillful means is what we can do is just to take our attention and put it back onto the breath. Report an error in the passage at 16:33 Highlight the passage at 16:33

16:55 And that's simple. That's okay. But then if you can't do that, and a lot of people can't. For some reason, it's just difficult. And so you can't do that. What we teach here is to, like a nice way of looking at it, is to be a passive observer. A passive observer. Somebody who doesn't get involved. Doesn't get involved and allow things to happen. Because, why do we do that? Report an error in the passage at 16:55 Highlight the passage at 16:55

17:31 The reason why we do that is because we have understood, I've understood through many years of meditation, Is that when you leave things alone, those things will disappear. And a good example is anger. We get angry as human beings. But when you get angry, do you stay angry forever? Report an error in the passage at 17:31 Highlight the passage at 17:31

18:05 No. Maybe some people do. But do you get angry forever? that. Report an error in the passage at 18:05 Highlight the passage at 18:05

18:13 www.Ajahn Santutthi.com and okay another thing is another another thing like so say just take anger for example is you know when we get angry and we kind of um we get involved with that anger All that does is perpetuate the anger even longer. So the involvement of the anger makes it stretch out. But if we step back and just allow things to be, allow things to happen, that anger will subside a lot quicker than us getting involved and trying to fix the problem. Report an error in the passage at 18:13 Highlight the passage at 18:13

19:08 And it's also the same with the mind. We're going to have trouble with the thinking mind. And sometimes we think we need to get involved, we need to fix it up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But all that is doing is prolonging, prolonging the silence of the mind to arise. Report an error in the passage at 19:08 Highlight the passage at 19:08

19:26 So what do we do as meditators? We just step back. We just step back and allow the show to happen. Allow the show to happen. And eventually, things will quiet down. www .ajahnantutthi.com from your world and just and just being like in this posture doing nothing this is a posture that allows nothing to appear this is a posture that allows silence of the mind Report an error in the passage at 19:26 Highlight the passage at 19:26

20:41 Where the mind can quieten it down. So this is what we do. And I'm pretty, I'm pretty like, like, like when you go to sleep, you know, there's a mind quiet, the mind quietens down, right, before you go to sleep. You go to sleep and then the mind just goes quiet and stuff and then you fall asleep. Because you kind of put yourself in that situation where, you know, the mind can go to sleep. Report an error in the passage at 20:41 Highlight the passage at 20:41

21:08 And in the same way, you know, you're putting yourself in a situation where the mind can calm down. And the truth is, you know, the truth is another thing to kind of remember is that these things take time. These things need patience. You can't rush these things. And you can't expect them to grow and happen straight away. Report an error in the passage at 21:08 Highlight the passage at 21:08

21:35 It takes time. It's almost like we like to, as meditation teachers, we like to Report an error in the passage at 21:35 Highlight the passage at 21:35

22:43 And also, you know, that's like one of the indicators as a meditator to know that you're making some improvement is that things are getting easy and easy and easy. You're becoming more peaceful human beings. That peace that you are looking for is growing in from within. And it's actually one of these, the peace kind of, it grows within and it kind of, it's just like, You're just adding another trait to your personality. It is like that. Report an error in the passage at 22:43 Highlight the passage at 22:43

23:21 It's like adding another trait. Like human beings, we have these traits. We can get angry. We can love. We can laugh. We can think. We can be restless. We can stress out. And also we can be peaceful. We have a smorgasbord of traits, of characters that is out there. We can be a dictator, you know. Those kinds of things, mad things happening in the world. Report an error in the passage at 23:21 Highlight the passage at 23:21

23:56 And we have all these things that we can't be or we have access to. And what we're learning or what we're giving ourselves an opportunity of is accessing that peace that we have in ourselves somewhere. So that's what we, you know. dictator you know Report an error in the passage at 23:56 Highlight the passage at 23:56

24:17 That's what we've got to offer here. So right now, what I'll do is usually I'll guide the meditation for half an hour. And to me, this is the most important part of the evening is to actually do the meditation. Report an error in the passage at 24:17 Highlight the passage at 24:17

24:41 Actually just sit down, be in the moment and not judge. And just see what happens, you know, and don't control things. If you fall asleep, you fall asleep. If you think, you think, you know. And just allow the mind to kind of, like I like to kind of say, allow like the different character traits of the mind to kind of reveal itself. Report an error in the passage at 24:41 Highlight the passage at 24:41

25:10 And then you can kind of pick and choose what you want to get involved in. And the character traits that kind of arise when you put yourself in a meditation posture is the, what I'm talking about is peace. Report an error in the passage at 25:10 Highlight the passage at 25:10

25:24 And then you kind of understand what the peace is over time and then you kind of get it and you can always go, you can go back there and hang out with the peace. So that's what we're doing. We're just on the path of discovery. Anyways, that's too much. Shall we Report an error in the passage at 25:24 Highlight the passage at 25:24

· · · silence, 1 minute

26:21 close our eyes? Just Report an error in the passage at 26:21 Highlight the passage at 26:21

· · · silence, 1 minute

27:08 meditating, I Report an error in the passage at 27:08 Highlight the passage at 27:08

27:12 don't know how you feel about meditation, but it gets to the point where you just feel comfortable, you feel okay, you feel at ease, sitting down with your eyes closed, being with yourself. Report an error in the passage at 27:12 Highlight the passage at 27:12

27:44 I know what it feels to have the feelings of difficulty arise. rise of difficulty in the mind when we're meditating. Report an error in the passage at 27:44 Highlight the passage at 27:44

27:59 When I first started out, I had a lot of difficult emotions or thinking that it was difficult. And just let you understand that that's just a normal part of the process. Report an error in the passage at 27:59 Highlight the passage at 27:59

28:21 After a while we kind of got used to it. Report an error in the passage at 28:21 Highlight the passage at 28:21

28:35 And then we get to a place where we're just cruising along, really. Just cruising along and watching our minds. We're Report an error in the passage at 28:35 Highlight the passage at 28:35

29:01 just watching and we're waiting for the peace to arise. We're watching, we're waiting for the mind to become still. Report an error in the passage at 29:01 Highlight the passage at 29:01

· · · silence, 1 minute

30:14 Hopefully, some of us have been meditating for a while now. Hopefully, we can distinguish. What the peace is and Report an error in the passage at 30:14 Highlight the passage at 30:14

30:35 be gladdened that you know what it is and you just hang out there. We're Report an error in the passage at 30:35 Highlight the passage at 30:35

30:48 just hanging out with the peace and Report an error in the passage at 30:48 Highlight the passage at 30:48

30:58 it's fair to say in life we have these places that we like to go to hang out. Some of us we like to hang out, hang out in the bush. We like to hang out on the trails and walk through the the through the forest Report an error in the passage at 30:58 Highlight the passage at 30:58

31:25 And when we're hanging out there, we're hanging out. for whatever time after we hang out there We tend to feel better. Report an error in the passage at 31:25 Highlight the passage at 31:25

31:38 And there's other places we like to hang out, whether it's, you know, the beach. Report an error in the passage at 31:38 Highlight the passage at 31:38

31:53 in the kitchen Places where we enjoy to hang out. Report an error in the passage at 31:53 Highlight the passage at 31:53

32:05 a positive impact on our minds and Report an error in the passage at 32:05 Highlight the passage at 32:05

32:12 in the same way what we're doing here is we are hanging out with the peace or we're just hanging out trying to learn what peace is or trying to discover it and because we're hanging out in a place where it's peaceful after hanging out here we just feel a lot better Report an error in the passage at 32:12 Highlight the passage at 32:12

32:49 We feel good, just like how we like to hang out on the walking trails or hang out in the beach or hang out with good company. We always tend to feel better afterwards. So essentially, we're doing the same thing here. Report an error in the passage at 32:49 Highlight the passage at 32:49

33:12 We're hanging out in meditation. We don't Report an error in the passage at 33:12 Highlight the passage at 33:12

· · · silence, 8 minutes

41:28 want to change anything. We're just allowing our minds to be whichever way it wants it to be. We're leaving it alone. We're taking our hands off the steering wheel and we just allow the meditation to drive itself into some peaceful states of mind. Report an error in the passage at 41:28 Highlight the passage at 41:28

41:56 It may take a while. It may take time for our minds to wind down. But if we look carefully, if we do things carefully, we can see the peacefulness in Report an error in the passage at 41:56 Highlight the passage at 41:56

42:18 The meditation. There will be moments where things become quiet. Whether it's for two seconds, five seconds, ten seconds, one minute. Report an error in the passage at 42:18 Highlight the passage at 42:18

42:34 The mind can't keep going and thinking about stuff. It needs to take a break. And once it takes a break, you can see the silence there. It may be very little. It may be very small. But the more times Report an error in the passage at 42:34 Highlight the passage at 42:34

42:55 You look into this silence. You look into this peace. What you focus on, it tends to grow. If we focus on the right things in our meditation, that grows. You know, with the thinking, when we're thinking about stuff and when we're focusing on it, sometimes that just adds more energy into the thinking and you just start to think uncontrollably. Report an error in the passage at 42:55 Highlight the passage at 42:55

43:32 And the mind doesn't shut up. So that's why we take a step back to allow the play of the mind to unravel things that we haven't seen before. And then we start to see the peace. We start to see the stillness. And we can look at it more. We can zoom in on it. These things will start to grow. Report an error in the passage at 43:32 Highlight the passage at 43:32

· · · silence, 13 minutes

57:29 At the end of the meditation, we open up for questions and answers or any comments. So if anybody's got anything to ask or anything to say, you can say something. But usually no one says anything. Report an error in the passage at 57:29 Highlight the passage at 57:29

57:53 Just to try and absorb it and reset. Yes. I felt like I was constantly going, okay, thanks. Okay, thanks. Yeah, yeah. I've done lots of guided meditation. I haven't done an awful lot of just trying to do it on my own. But I love doing the guided meditations on you. Okay, yeah. And I think that's the nice thing about the process of meditation. Report an error in the passage at 57:53 Highlight the passage at 57:53

58:21 We have to try things out. You know, you try that little method that you have and we hear something from somebody else and we try that as well. And the reason why we try these things is to, and then what we learn is we can, we learn whether these things are helpful for us or not. Yeah. I thought it was helpful, she said I'm not really good at it yet, so I was constantly saying it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Report an error in the passage at 58:21 Highlight the passage at 58:21

58:48 Because it would reset me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and then the thing is, you might not find it helpful, so then you might go to a different method and then try that. And that's one of the... The lovely things about the meditation practice is there's like a lot of different teachers out there who teach different things and they may say something that kind of resonates with you, a practical kind of method that can help you with your meditation practice. Report an error in the passage at 58:48 Highlight the passage at 58:48

59:17 And one of the things that I learned as a young meditator is what I was saying earlier on is to Learn to have that ability or to learn that ability to just step back and just watch the show happen. Just step back. Report an error in the passage at 59:17 Highlight the passage at 59:17

59:36 We step back. We don't get involved kind of thing. And usually in life when you step back and you don't get involved with the dramas of your family or the dramas at work, those... What happens is you kind of live a more peaceful life that way. You don't step in and get involved in stuff. And that's kind of the same with the meditation practice. Report an error in the passage at 59:36 Highlight the passage at 59:36

1:00:02 It doesn't make sense. Sometimes we think we need to get involved to fix things, but it kind of works in the opposite way where when you step back and you watch, we kind of understand that things start to settle down and they start to become quiet. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:02 Highlight the passage at 1:00:02

1:00:20 That's a very easy way to meditate. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:20 Highlight the passage at 1:00:20

1:00:30 You want to go home? Yes. Okay, okay, okay. Thank you very much. Okay, no problem, anytime. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:30 Highlight the passage at 1:00:30