Day 1 -2022 June 10 Day Retreat with Delson Armstrong-Instructions

Are we good to go? How many newcomers do we have? This practice that you're going to be doing for the next 10 days is a loving-kindness practice. It starts with loving-kindness. And the quickest way to get to loving-kindness and to mindfulness is through the smile. So you're going to see a lot of emphasis on smiling.

That means that everywhere you go, whatever you do, make it a point to smile in your heart, on your face, and in your mind. Keep your mind uplifted. Smiling is the quickest way to be mindful. And what does it mean to be mindful? Mindful doesn't mean mindfully walking, mindfully eating, hour, and all of these things. It's about paying attention to what's going on in your mind.

In other words, mindfulness is remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one object to the other. That's the basic definition of mindfulness. This practice that you're going to be doing will engage in mindfulness. And your object, when you begin, will be loving-kindness. How do you do the practice? You sit in a chair or sit cross-legged, whatever works for you. It doesn't matter.

Sit relatively straight, keep your spine straight, and you want to close your eyes. Keep your eyes closed for the beginning of the meditation because it allows the mind to become that much more collected. Keep a smile on your face, in your mind, and in your heart. Keep things relaxed. Keep things very open. Now, you can use statements like, may I be happy, may I be filled with love and kindness, may I be free of suffering, whatever works for you. And if you want, you can visualize something that makes you happy. A wholesome image, like holding a puppy, or a baby in your arms, or whatever works for you, or maybe a wholesome memory, something that makes you happy.

And once you feel this warmth in your heart, this warmth in your chest, that's the feeling of loving-kindness. Once you feel that, let go of the verbalizing of may I be happy and so on. Let go of the wholesome imaging, let go of the wholesome memories. And stay with that feeling. Stay with that feeling as long as you can for the first 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, you switch over to a spiritual friend. A spiritual friend is somebody who is alive, who is of the same sex, who you know, who you admire, who you respect. It could be anyone but not a family member, not a relative. So if there's somebody that you think about that brings a smile to your face, that makes you uplifted, go with that person. As long as they're alive, same sex, and not a family member.

Some people like to visualize their spiritual friend. They like to visualize that the feeling of loving-kindness is going out to them. They see them smile, they see them laugh, they see them happy, and they rejoice in that. Some people are not as visually focused as others. So you could just know that the spiritual friend is in your mind and keep them in your heart and let them bask in that feeling of loving-kindness. Let them bask in the feeling of metta. You want to stay with that for the duration of the meditation practice, for as long as you can. Yourself, staying with that, or sending loving-kindness to your spiritual friend, what will inevitably happen is you will get distracted.

And that's okay. Distractions are your friends. Distractions are your teachers. They're called hindrances. And they shed light on where your attachments are. They shed light on where your resistance is. See them, don't push them. Don't resist them. Don't try to push them down. Don't try to suppress them. How do you deal with hindrances? It's through right effort.

Right effort is constituted by the 6Rs. Recognize, release, relax, re-smile, return, and repeat. Say with your meditation you're sending yourself loving-kindness, you feel the loving-kindness, things are going great, you start to feel that warmth and you're staying with it for some time, and then suddenly you're thinking about something else. You're thinking about, did I leave the stone stove on before coming to this retreat? Did something happen? I wonder how this person is. All kinds of thoughts will happen, and that's okay. If you recognize that you got distracted, that's the first step: recognizing that now the mind is no longer with its object of meditation.

A distraction is anything that pulls your attention fully away from the feeling of loving-kindness. So sometimes there will be thoughts in the background while you are with the feeling of loving-kindness. It'll just be like wisps, you know, of thoughts here and there in the background. Let them be. You don't have to engage with them.

They will go away on their own because they don't have your attention to give them. But if your mind becomes fully distracted, that is to say your mind becomes distracted, which is, it fully is now somewhere else and thinking about something else, no longer with the object of meditation, then when you recognize that you were distracted, bring your attention back to the mind and body. Release your attention from the distraction, bringing it back to the mind and body.

The third step is to relax. And what are you relaxing? You're relaxing the tightness and tension in the mind and body. Tightness and tension is a manifestation of craving, of tanha. Like it, or I want it, or I don't want it, or I am it. So it manifests as this contraction in the mind and in the body.

So you relax. You intentionally relax the body. Let go. This is keeping things tight, right? And you just let go. And you feel the relief from that. That's the relax step. Letting go of the tightness and tension keeps the mind open, keeps the mind expanding. And you actually, in that moment, experience a mundane form of Nibbana, of letting go.

Having let go, now you come back to your smile. As I said in the beginning of the practice, you're staying with the smile. If you notice that the smile is still there, great, keep it going. If you notice that you're no longer smiling, bring up the smile of metta. You don't need to re-emphasize any kind of imagery or re-emphasize any kind of verbalization.

Just come back to the feeling in the heart. You don't have to start from ground zero. You don't have to start from having to verbalize. Just stay with the feeling, and stay with it for as long as you can. Having stayed with it for as long as you can, you get distracted again. So what do you do? You repeat. Anytime your mind becomes distracted, you 6R. You don't fight the distraction. You don't try to control the distraction. You don't identify with the distraction. You don't do anything. Just acknowledge it's there. All right, here's a distraction. Now you just gently bring your attention back to the mind and body, which is the anchor for being present. Then you relax the tightness and tension that's there in mind and body.

You come back to the smile. Notice if you're smiling. If you're smiling, keep it going. If you're not smiling, bring up the smile. Return back to the feeling and repeat. That's what you have to do. So this whole process of meditation is a very feeling-based meditation, meaning you really feel the loving-kindness. It's not about verbalizing, not about using chants or mantras to bring up the feeling. It's staying with the feeling.

And as you do this, you want to also do this while you're doing anything else. That is to say, even while you're eating your food at breakfast or lunch, stay with the feeling. When you're walking, now this is the walking meditation. When you're walking around, you stay with the feeling. You walk. You don't have to walk mindfully. You don't have to walk slowly, paying attention to the steps.

What you are paying attention to is the feeling of loving-kindness. So you're paying attention to that feeling and you're walking normally. Look around you, look ahead of you, and just walk as you would in the park or wherever you're walking. But don't get distracted by the birds, don't get distracted by the flowers, don't get distracted by the butterflies, don't get distracted by the dogs running around or the cats or snakes and this and that. The moment you start to see that you get distracted, you've recognized the mind is distracted, no longer with the feeling. You recognize that, you release your attention from that, bring it back to mind and body, relax the tension, come back to the smile, and return back to the object. This is not a process of repeating. Okay, now I'm recognizing. Okay, now I'm releasing. Okay, now I'm relaxing. Okay, now I'm re-smiling.

You just do it. Just let it flow. As soon as you see that the mind is distracted, that's already recognizing it. Now you're bringing your attention back to mind and body, that's already releasing. Now you're letting go of the tightness and tension, that's already relaxing. Now you pay attention to the smile, that's already re-smiling. Then you come back to your object, that's already returning.

So it should take you no more than four or five seconds to do the whole 6Rs. And as you get better and better at doing the 6Rs, it'll take you less and less time to do it. Within one or two seconds, you're back with your object using the 6Rs. This is going to be emphasized a lot throughout the retreat. Most of the questions you guys are going to have, the answer to it is going to be the 6Rs. How do I deal with this? 6R it. What do I do when this happens? 6R. All right. So you're probably going to get sick and tired by the seventh or eighth day, hearing about the 6Rs.

But by that time, hopefully it becomes part of your mind, part of your practice. So some practical things in terms of what to do on this retreat. When you go back to your cabins and you go to sleep, make a determination in your mind, make an intention that you're going to do two things. Number one. Let's say you have to get up at 5 o'clock or 5.30. Let's say it's 5 o'clock.

Make a determination that you're going to get up at 4.57 or 5.02 or 4.58 and see how well you hit that time. The second part is make a determination that when you get up, you're going to smile. You're going to wake up with a smile on your face. As soon as you do that, now you're mindful. You're recognizing how mind's attention is moving from one thing over the other. And keep that smile going. Bring up the feeling of loving kindness and keep it going. Whatever it is you're doing, whatever minuscule thing you might be doing, whatever mundane thing you might be doing, keep your attention on the loving kindness. Stay with that feeling. And keep 6R-ing anytime you get distracted.

And this is a silent retreat. Keep to your practice. Be very practical. You need to talk to somebody about something, passing the salt or getting some water, whatever it might be, that's okay. But don't talk about your practice to others. Don't talk about what's going on with you or ask them what's going on with them. This does two things. One, it takes you away from your own practice, and two, it takes the other person away from their practice. So maintain noble silence.

This is one form of noble silence. So keep as silent as possible. That way your verbal formations, which we'll talk about later on in this retreat, are basically ceased. You don't have to think about what you need to say. You just stay with the feeling of loving kindness. And try to stay on the property. Sometimes what happens is people get very eager about the walking practice. They get off the property and start walking up and down the road. It's a dangerous thing to do because cars can come in and suddenly you become like bhaiya. You get gored by a car and that's it. That's the end.

So stay on the property and walk around here. There's a lot of space, plenty of space to walk around. tomorrow, you're going to take the eight, no, you're going to take eight precepts tomorrow. So we're going to talk about the importance of precepts tomorrow's Dhamma talk, but understand that when you take them, take them with the commitment to keep them, right? Take them with the commitment to maintain them, because that's really going to keep your practice going really successfully.

It's going to keep your mind uplifted. It's going to keep your mind meditative, it's going to keep your mind mindful. So the more you take the precepts and keep them, the easier your meditation is going to become. Now, for people who have already done the practice, who are doing the six directions, start with loving-kindness in each direction for about four to five minutes, each direction, and then radiate loving-kindness in all directions and then let that gradually go and to compassion. Or if it goes all the way to equanimity directly, that's fine too. Might go to compassion, then joy, then equanimity.

And stay with that. And then gradually go into quiet mind and stay in quiet mind for as long as you can. And if you're doing the advanced practice of the six directions, then when you're doing the walking practice, keep radiating loving-kindness. Keep radiating whatever comes to be. Compassion, joy, whatever it might be. And if mind goes into quiet mind while you're walking, fine, stay with that as well. But stay with loving-kindness in the beginning for the first couple of minutes at least so that the mind has something to do. Because the idea of trying to go into quiet mind, yes, the mind is quiet, but there's all of this activity that's going on and you're not really fully in quiet mind.

So you need the practice to start with loving-kindness or any of the brahmaviharas, going in different directions. So you're balancing your energy, balancing your tranquility, balancing your collectedness. And then you can eventually get to quiet mind. Is there anything else that I'm missing? All good, huh? Yeah. What if someone has trouble bringing up the feeling of loving-kindness? If somebody has trouble bringing up the feeling of loving-kindness, they should come see me and I'll tell them. But just as a general instruction, stay with the smile. If you can't bring up the feeling of loving-kindness, you can stay with the smile.

And we'll talk more about that if you have any concerns about that. Don't try too hard. Whatever effort you think that you need, do that by half, and then you can always go a little more if you need to. But that is a general tendency. There are two barriers to the practice generally that people have. They try too hard, which means they're pushing for the feeling of loving-kindness.

And when the loving-kindness doesn't come up, they try too hard, their mind becomes constricted, becomes too concentrated, and now you're no longer doing the practice. Now you have a lot more restlessness. Now you have anxiousness. Now you have aversion. Now you have irritation and all these things coming up. So don't try too hard. Don't push. And the second part is accepting whatever is happening, including yourself. This isn't working.

Come back to the six R's. See what happens. Don't beat yourself up. Don't get upset at yourself or at the practice or anything for that matter. Just accept things as they are. The more you do that with a smile, the easier mind becomes uplifted and the easier it's able to bring up that feeling of loving-kindness. And don't overthink things.

I have to say this because yesterday went to see Top Gun 2, Top Gun Maverick. It's a great movie. I recommend wholeheartedly. But there was an interesting piece of advice that the main character gives. He says, don't think, just do it. And what that means really in terms of practice or in terms of anything that you're doing, when you are in the flow of the practice, don't doubt yourself. overthink what's going on, what happens. Now you're engaging the mind with doubt. And now that flow stops.

Once you are with the feeling of loving-kindness, whatever it is, just stay with that. Don't overthink. Do I need to 6R now? Am I doing this correctly? What's going on? All of these thoughts, if you start to recognize, if you start to see those, 6R those, come back to the feeling of loving-kindness. And just let the feeling flow.

Just let the practice flow. So all you have to do here is bring up the feeling of loving-kindness, whatever it might be, whether you're doing the advanced practice or the beginning practice. Bring up the feeling, stay with it, keep observing it, and 6R whenever you get distracted. That's really the gist of the practice. Whether you're doing it as a sitting meditation, walking meditation, while in the shower, eating your food, petting the dog, whatever it might be, stay with the feeling and 6R when you get distracted. Any questions? Not waiting for anything, not focusing on anything, just stay with the smile.

And eventually things will start to change. If you're still having trouble, then we'll talk about that. But don't focus on anything. Focus is the other bad word starting with F. Just keep things light. Keep things collected, as we say. So if you have trouble bringing up the feeling, stay with the smile for the time being. And then we'll talk about it at your interview tomorrow. has trouble. Yeah. Can you say a few words about sitting in the night?

Yeah, that can happen. Sometimes your practice goes really well and you have all this energy in the night, and you might wake up at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., whatever it might be. And if you feel like you want to sit, then get up from bed and sit. Sit for however long your energy is there, and stay with the feeling, keep the practice going, and then go to sleep whenever you feel tired.

So if you feel like you want to practice in the nighttime, completely fine. with the object meditating like this? Yeah, you could try that. You could just stay with the feeling of loving-kindness and let the mind rest in that and you fall asleep eventually. Anything else? One thing is don't meditate in the dark. Oh, yeah. Because I'll come back and I'll find the lights are all off and people are sitting in here and tend to be towards...

Yeah. Keep the lights on. The front lights, you don't have to have the back lights, all these lights, but these things are... Yeah. Yeah, because if you meditate in the dark, what's going to happen? You're going to start to become drowsy and fall asleep. So keep the lights on, both literally and figuratively. So what I mean by figuratively is be mindful. Keep observing what's going on with your mind's attention. Because the lights will keep you awake. The lights will keep you right there with the meditation. If you keep the lights off, there's a tendency that mind just wants to go to sleep.

All right, let's share some merit then. May suffering ones be suffering free. May the fear-struck be fearless. May the grieving shed all grief, and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power, share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation. Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.