Jan 2025 Retreat: Orientation and Talk w/Delson Armstrong

All right, okay. So to the people that are here, welcome to the January retreat. And I'm going to give you some instructions first for those who are beginners of this practice on how to do the practice. So it's important to understand that first and foremost, you can sit in whatever position you are comfortable in. to sit in full lotus you don't need to sit on the floor in cross-legged position you can sit in a chair that's sufficient as long as your back is relatively straight and you feel comfortable remember you will be throughout throughout this retreat sitting for longer and longer periods of time so make sure that you find the you find the position that you feel most comfortable

Now, the practice is quite straightforward. This is a feeling-based practice, meaning it's something that you are experiencing as somatic sensations as well as related to the mind in terms of how you feel loving-kindness. This is a brahmavihara practice: kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. We will begin, for those who are starting out, with loving kindness. How do you meditate with this practice? You sit down, close your eyes, and you put a small smile on your face, smile in your heart, and smile. Because it keeps the mind uplifted. And it's a good way of anchoring your mindfulness in the present moment. And that's what that means shortly. So you're closing your eyes. You sit straight. Put a little smile on your face.

And you can bring up an image that makes you happy, or a memory that makes you happy. Or you can use things like gratitude, things that you are grateful for, people that you're grateful for, the relationships you have, the experiences that you have, and so on that make you feel uplifted. And this feeling of being uplifted is a warm sensation in the center of your chest. And this psychosomatic sensation that is this warm, fuzzy, glowing feeling associated with the wholesome image. That image can be holding a little baby in your arms. It could be looking into a puppy's eyes. It could be anything that makes you feel uplifted or the memory of something that is uplifting in your life.

of that warm, glow, fuzzy feeling in your heart center. You can drop the image, drop whatever it is, and let the mind rest in that feeling. You can use statements in your mind, mentally saying a couple of times, don't have to make it into a mantra. May I be happy. May I be well. May I be free of suffering. May I be filled with loving kindness. And you feel into that loving kindness. This warm, glowing feeling is associated with loving kindness, with metta. You're going to be sitting for a minimum of 30 minutes per sitting session. So the first 10 minutes will be with loving kindness towards yourself. of the sit. If you're sitting more than 30 minutes, that's even better.

If you find that your meditation is going beyond 30 minutes, it doesn't mean that you have to break your meditation sit at 30 minutes. It's good that it keeps going. So for the duration after the first 10 minutes, you're going to send it to a friend, to a kalyanamitta, as it's known in Pali. This is generally translated as your spiritual friend. Spiritual friend is somebody who is of the same sex, who is alive, and who is not a family member. The reason why we say these three things specifically is because when we say somebody of the same sex, we mean somebody that you do not have any kind of sexual attraction to. The reason why it's somebody alive is because if you start thinking of somebody who has passed on, it may bring up experiences of grief, nostalgia.

And if you bring up a family member at this point in time, you know, you might feel conflicted because not all family members necessarily are always the great, greatest with us. And so we have the good, bad, and the ugly memories of them. And so something can trigger that. We'll be dealing with family members at a later stage. A spiritual friend. A spiritual friend can be somebody who you admire, somebody who you think about immediately, and they light up your heart. They light up your mind. It could be somebody you admire in the public life as well. Or, you know, the men out there, it could be me. I need all the loving kindness I can get.

So use me as a spiritual friend. That would be great. But in any case, whoever you want to use is the person that you're going to stick on with until I decide to change your practice, which can happen later on in this retreat. friend. Now, when you're meditating and you're sending loving kindness to yourself or to your spiritual friend, at some point, you will get distracted. And I want you to come to terms with that reality. There is nothing wrong with being distracted. It is just a moment or series of moments of

teaching, the distractions help you understand where the attachments of the mind lie. When you get distracted, they are your teachers. They're your friends. They're shedding light on your attachments and your trigger points. So when you see them, be okay with that. of the situation. This distraction is here. That is recognizing that you are distracted. That is the first R in the six R's process. So in the first R, you recognize your mind is distracted. Then you release your attention from that. How do you release your attention? You let it go. You put your attention back into the mind and body. And thereby, you relax. It's very crucial. What are you relaxing? You're relaxing tightness and tension in the mind and body, which are functions and emanations or manifestations of craving.

What is craving? Craving is not desire. Desire can be neutral. Desire can be wholesome. Desire can be unwholesome. An unwholesome desire is fraught with all kinds of obsessive thoughts, mental proliferation, the desire to hold on to something when you should be letting go of it, the desire to push something away because you don't like it, when your mind can just be there in a very state. And this craving can arise in different kinds of ways. And these are different kinds of craving that can arise. But just understand for practical purposes, for the meditation practice, that the tension that arises is a manifestation of this craving. And so when you relax, how do you relax? Right now, I have a tight fist.

tension in that. As soon as I relax, I feel the ease. I feel the relief of letting go of that weakness. You relax and there is a feeling of expansiveness, a feeling of letting go, a feeling of relief. Then you re-smile. If you've stopped smiling, notice that and bring the smile up. If you're still smiling, great, keep that going. Return back to the object, whether it's sending loving kindness to your spiritual friend or sending loving kindness to yourself. And then you repeat whenever necessary. You may have to repeat this process many times before your mind remains collected enough in the feeling of loving kindness without getting distracted. There's a very important aspect to understand when it comes to distraction.

There may be background thoughts, but your mind and your heart are with the feeling of loving kindness. But you notice there are whispers of thoughts coming and going in the back. You're not distracted. When that happens. A distraction is only when your mind comes away completely from the feeling of loving kindness and is now tuning into whatever thought there is. In other words, I have loving kindness, but I notice some kind of thought is coming in from the background or in the background. But I still can feel the loving kindness. I can still be with my spiritual friend. I don't have to do anything with those background thoughts. They just come and go. But now my mind goes to a specific thought.

Maybe something someone said the other day. Now I'm reliving that memory. What's happening? My mind is no longer on the feeling of loving kindness. I'm caught in that thought loop. I'm mini samsara. What do I do? I recognize, oh, and you can't consciously recognize. You can only recognize when you recognize. You know, oh, I'm caught in this loop here. Okay, that's recognizing. I'm going to choose to let go of that. That's releasing. I'm going to relax my mind and body. That's relaxing. I'm coming back to my smile. And I'm returning back to the feeling of loving kindness.

And I stay there. But I repeat, anytime the mind gets distracted, the six R's is a short wave. You don't need to take more than two to three seconds to do the entire process from recognizing, releasing, relaxing, re-smiling, returning. So this is what you will be, this is your tool shed for this meditation practice. Use this every time you need to. You don't need to batter away at every distraction. Do not try to use the six R's. As the famous Master Yoda said, do or do not, there is no try. Don't push the six R's onto something.

Don't use it like a whack-a-mole. Only implement it whenever the mind is distracted. There are two things that I notice with every practitioner when they start on this retreat, let alone start when they're on retreat repetitively. One is they're not, well, before I start with the second issue, the first is they try too hard. They go gung-ho on the first couple of days and they try and they push and they feel like they're making progress, but all they're doing is they're suppressing all of the hindrances. What happens when you suppress a hindrance? Just as when you have a beach ball and you submerge it underwater, as soon as you let go of it, what happens?

Full force, that beach ball erupts out of the water. Push them down. And then you're going about your day and something triggers it. It all comes back up again. So this process of meditation that we are exploring together for these next 8, 9, 10 days is actually a process of Samatha and Vipassana. This is what TWIM is, Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation. Your mind is calm. Your mind is collected. The past now is being aware. Aware of what? That's where mindfulness comes in. You're remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. This is how you teach yourself. I am not your teacher. Nobody here is your teacher, but your own mind.

Observe the mind. It will show you. By observing the mind, you are practicing mindfulness. Remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. Whenever you recognize you're utilizing mindfulness. My mind was on loving kindness, but now it's here. It's moved. I'm going to now observe how it moves back into loving kindness with the steps of the rest of the six hours. Now, when it comes to the walking practice, there is also a walking practice. You do not need to walk slowly as you might see in other practices. Walk at a normal pace. I don't know what part of the world everybody is from, but if you can walk outside, that would be nice.

But if it's too cold, walk indoors, find a nice place where you can walk back and forth. Walk at a normal pace, 20 minutes, 25 minutes, and stay with the feeling of loving kindness. Don't be mindful of the walking itself as it would be in other traditions. You're more mindful of the feeling that's there. You're more mindful of the spiritual friend. And this is going to help you be mindful of your object, loving kindness, in everything that you do: when you're taking a shower, when you're having breakfast, when you're preparing lunch, when you're doing certain chores, when you are walking, obviously. If you have to go to the grocery store, deal with the feeling of loving kindness on your drive to the grocery store and back.

The idea is to cultivate this loving kindness every step of the way throughout your day. Literally, while you're walking and in terms of everything else that you're doing. For the advanced practitioner, you will start off with wherever you want to or whatever the mind says. Usually it will be loving kindness or compassion. Meditate or pervade that out in the six directions. Two to three minutes, five minutes tops, each direction. And then in all directions at the same time. And you keep that going until the feeling changes. And if you're going to be doing the walking practice, you're going to use the feeling of loving kindness comes out and you're going to send that out in all directions.

You're going to be in a field, an energetic bubble of loving kindness. Whatever the brahmavihara is, you're going to walk in that all the time. This is for the advanced practitioners. Now, for some practical stuff. Start our first interview, which is going to be day after tomorrow. I do not need to know your entire meditation history. I only need to know five basic things. Please keep this in mind because it will save all of us time. What was your object of meditation? How long did you sit for? What was your longest sitting or what was your best sit? What did you do when you got distracted?

And is there anything special that happened? So tell me about your best sit. I don't need to know about every single sit. What is a best sit? Best sit is where something interesting has happened that you find interesting and that feels like there is some kind of transformation. a bit too dramatic at this point in time, but some kind of transition into something else that's deeper, more collected, and so on and so forth. Maybe you experience more joy. Maybe you're experiencing more mindfulness. Maybe you're experiencing the mind's attention being more collected. Whatever it is, just let me know those things. I don't need to know every single meditation. Just let's talk about your most recent best sit in that day.

Over the last 24 hours since we spoke in our interview. And try to keep all of the daily stuff to a minimum in terms of, I know there are chores you might have to do. I know there's other things that you have to do, but this is your time. Take as much time as you can to dedicate it towards your practice.

So when it comes to the interviews, they will be recorded, but they're not going to be published. This is only for internal use. It can be helpful for other teachers to understand how the interview process goes. And there will be some other things that it can be used for. Like, for example, there's some research going on of how to create a meditation AI. There, your faces will not be there, none of the personal information, just the understanding of how the practice is going and how a teacher or a guide is able to give instruction. That's how it's helpful. In some of the interviews, one person might be there along with me, but they're not going to be chiming in.

They're just going to be there because they want to observe. So just completely ignore that. I think when it comes to interviews, that's really the main thing. Like, I want you guys to use your time wisely on this. So you're free to talk about what you want, but then what's the point of doing that? Like, that's why I'm saying stick to those five basic questions, five basic things I want to know from you, and it will help you in your practice. I think that's pretty much it from my side. David, I don't know if you have anything you want to share. Yeah. Hello, everybody. Let me share my screen and just kind of go over the schedule real quick, or at least the web page.

Now, it looks like we're missing two people, and I think it's Kush. Is there a Kush here? Partner? No Kush. What about now? I see somebody in Thai. It doesn't have a camera on. I don't know who you are. Are you new? It says New Tanita, and it's in Cambodian. Oh, in Cambodian. In Khmer. Okay. So that would be new.

Okay. All right. So then all I can see is we're missing Kush. Okay. All right. Let's see. So let's share this. Now, everybody's taking a look at this. Oh, I'm sharing the website page here. Let me go back and share the other side of that. Yeah, here we go. All right. So here's the page that's most appropriate for right now, which is the, of course, the meeting, which is happening. And then the link. You're going to be using this link for your interviews for everything. That's the same link. And as Nelson has gone through the questions, we'll probably ask. And there will be two sessions. So I don't know where Kush is, Australia. So that one's probably going to be deleted.

Or change or something. So interviews will start in a couple days from now. So today's Friday, at least here in the US. And then Saturday, you'll be free to meditate on your own. And then Sunday will be interviews. And so this is when you'll sign in at these times. This is central time. So you have to do a little change here on your own time zone. But I believe... I do. Yeah. David, hi. Mohan here. So, I'm actually in Singapore for the entire 10 days. Oh, okay. Is it possible to take which position? Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. That's very late. Okay. So, I'll move you up. What about anybody else? I just changed this just now, and I put in, I've moved up a few into, well, let's see.

Let's make sure that I have this updated here. I think this. Your password is always TWIM. Yeah, there we go. So I had actually already moved up a few here. So Swiss Pascal and Mohan, but Mohan, I'll put you at the top. So everything down below here in the afternoon session is in the U.S. zone, should be pretty good, so I put a little question mark there about it, but I'll take that one away so we know that New is here. So essentially, this is the schedules. Anybody have questions about any of this? Now, look at this on Sunday because it'll probably change again, but this, we're getting closer. When we did the first retreat, Delson did a guided meditation for people who have not done the practice very much or haven't done it before.

And I strongly suggest you watch this or just meditate to it. It's a very good guided meditation. And at some point, Delson will assign you a couple of things. Don't look at this stuff yet. Breaking down the barriers, six directions, these things will be assigned if you haven't on them yet, but don't do them until Delson tells you to do them.

Okay. Now, there is online retreat support page, the page that is on our website. It has got lots of documents here: guide to TWIM instructions, brief loving kindness instructions, the morning routine, taking the precepts every morning. And most of you hopefully can do eight precepts, where you only eat the two meals and then follow a real kind of an intensive meditation schedule. Some of you may not be able to do that. And here's five precepts. So you can download this. You can also watch Bhante Kusala give these instructions. Print out your form here and then read along as he gives you the precepts. There's some charts. You feel like you may be stressing out and trying too hard.

These are helpful links here. Some of you may be put on forgiveness, in which case there's a lot of materials here about forgiveness. That's about it. Okay. And the link to that is from the program. So the initial program webpage, which you're all familiar with, you go down to the bottom, you have the program schedule. This is today. Bhante's orientation, which I suggest you watch. And then here's the link to the support page. A little video about the 6R's. There's some little things you can read. And again, links to reciting the refuges and the precepts. And suggested schedule. You can modify as you need to.

Now, the talks that you're going to watch every day, one talk per day, is from this playlist. And it was a retreat that was done in Budapada, India, or the Budapada Retreat Center in India. And there's about nine talks on here. And watch one of those each day. If you have questions, just send emails. So tomorrow, again, more little talks, support pages. So you'll want to meditate. Do your sitting at least 30 minutes. If you can go longer, that's great. And I'll let you read these things here. And then this is just my retreats down here, but don't look at that. So that's basically the web pages.

May suffering ones be suffering free, and the fear-struck fearless be. 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. All right, everyone. Enjoy your retreat. And I will see you all day after tomorrow in your first interview. Have fun. Bye-bye.