madmonkeymind

The speaker discusses meditation and its basis. They explain that meditation involves simply sitting and focuses on calming the mind and body. Different techniques such as deep breathing and finding calming activities are mentioned. The speaker emphasizes the importance of learning to calm oneself and letting go of distractions. Breathing is highlighted as a key aspect of meditation. The speaker concludes by mentioning that they will likely discuss breathing again in the future. Hi everyone, I thought I'd talk a little bit about what we were discussing yesterday and maybe clarify and add something to it. I asked my sister, you know, what meditation was and because she's done some tantric, different tantric meditation and she's also been to other classes or other systems, for example yoga. So what is meditation? What is the basis of it? And she just, as she said, you just sit. And in fact that's a very good answer because part of the problem with people in general is they fidget. They fidget with the mind, they fidget with the body and just sitting is actually one of the most advanced forms of meditation in Zen, just sit, but it has a very deep meaning and it has different levels of understanding. Some people just call it beginner's mind and in a sense it is that. So going back to what we were talking about yesterday where you are just focusing and thinking about a specific area or problem that you may be having. How does this apply to a more intense practice of just sitting or sitting with stillness, with calmness? And the way this is done initially is through deep breathing, perhaps to calm you down. If you are interested in doing things like looking or listening to music that calms you or burning incense that calms you, whatever calms you, whatever brings you to a point of calmness is a very good practice and some people do this through hypnosis or trance induction or as I say watching other people bringing you into a very calm state of mind. There are various ways of doing this and it depends what works for you and what is applicable to you. So the simplest way of doing this of course is literally to just sit, but it is actually for many people, for some people not so much so, but for some people it is very difficult to just sit still and also to keep the mind still, but first you have to learn to calm the body in some way and that is all aspects of the body, it is also the feelings and the sensations and the smells and the hearing, you know, you hear things, you go, what was that? What was that sound? Oh something is going on. Oh the phone has gone off. Oh I have got to go, I have got to go, and there is this sort of frenzy with all the, with all the, what in Zen are called the sense gates, they are always bringing your attention to them and trying to distract you, we call it monkey mind or mad monkey mind, my sister calls it mad monkey mind and I think that in some ways is more appropriate. So we can still, we can still the body by just sitting and becoming aware, just becoming aware, attentive to what is happening as well as the other different systems that I have talked about and if you do that you will find eventually that you can sit and not be disturbed by all the things you have to do, the thoughts of the past, the memories, oh what do I need to do? Oh I need to, I need to do really good meditation, I really need to do, all this kind of nonsense that arises, you are letting it all go, just like when you are on holiday, yesterday we talked about doing meditation in a deck chair or just relaxing on a beach, yeah you just let it all go, that is a very difficult thing to do because most of us are used to a frenzy of mind and emotional and physical sensations, that is how we live our life, complete frenzy, so you have to learn to calm yourself and that is an ongoing process and that can take a long time and one of the easiest ways of doing that is, and it is a technique that is used in various systems, traditional systems, is through the breath and through taking deep breaths and if you just do, if you just learn one thing, if you learn how to breathe, I spent many years not breathing or very shallow, very high level breathing because I was in such a state of concentration, concentrated fear or concentrated, oh I have got to do everything right, so that is not applicable to what we are talking about, you do not want that high breathing, you want to start breathing in a complete way, not just from what is sometimes called the hara, the lower part, moving the belly in and out in order to expand the chest, it is actually all of the lungs and the abdomen type of breathing that goes on is just an aspect of that. Anyway, we have talked about breathing before and we will probably talk about it again. Anyway, that is all from me for today. Bye now.