Kalimpong Buddha Pāda 2023 Day 1 Introduction

I'm Tugumama and I work here in Buddha Pada in the management, so on behalf of Buddha Pada I welcome everybody, and we are very happy that Delson is here to lead this personal retreat. We have Vikraj, who is our manager here, and we also have Divanji and other ground staff, so if you need any assistance during this retreat, please reach out to us. I hope you have a wonderful retreat, and now I hand it over to Rikyasan. Thank you, Sasani. Do we need this? Can everybody hear me? All good? Okay.

So this practice that we're going to be doing for the next 10 days is the Brahmavihara practice. Brahmaviharas, which constitute loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. The meditation that I will be presenting to you is a very simple meditation. It's more of a feeling-based meditation, which means you are to experience the feeling of loving-kindness rather than just using different kinds of statements like, may I be happy, may I be well, may I be free of suffering. It's not something you have to keep saying repetitively. You can use statements like may I be happy, may I be well, may I be filled with loving kindness, and so on, to bring up that feeling, or you can use different imagery in your mind.

You can use an image of a wholesome memory in your life, maybe something that you did that you're happy about, or something that provided you a lot of joy. Think back in those moments, those wholesome moments, and the feeling that you will experience is a feeling of warmth in your heart, a feeling of warmth in this area, in the chest. And when you start to feel that, you start to experience that loving-kindness.

So when you experience that loving-kindness, you let go of any of the statements in your mind, may I be happy and so on. You let go of the images or the wholesome memories. And you let your awareness rest on the feeling of loving-kindness. That's it. It's like you're basking in the awareness of loving kindness. So when you sit down to practice, you want to sit in a comfortable position. You want to be able to sit so that you can sit for longer periods of time. If you are a beginner, you can sit for a minimum of 30 minutes. If you can go beyond that and sit for an hour, that's even better.

So you can sit on a cushion, you can sit in a chair if that's more comfortable to you, and when you sit, keep your back erect, keep it straight. Right? You want to let your body be straight but not stiff. Just relax. And when you sit down, you can do a bit of a body scan from head to toe. Just scan the rest of your body from head to toe and notice if there's any tightness or tension.

And if there's any tightness or tension, then just soften it. Just relax it, just let it go. And bring up a small smile on your face. This is very important to do. If you see any kind of statues or images of the Buddha, you will see that he has a small smile on his face. And that's indicating a teaching to you. That's indicating that if you want to succeed in this practice, then you want to be able to be free of any kind of tightness and tension. And that starts with smiling. Even if you don't feel like smiling, and I see a lot of you are not smiling, hopefully by the end of this retreat, I will see a lot more smiles.

Don't be so serious. You're here on vacation. You're here to enjoy yourself and be happy. Right? That is the key. That is the goal of this practice, is to be happy. And you practice that by having a very relaxed mindset. There's nothing to do. There's nowhere to go. There's nothing to achieve. Just let go of any concepts in your mind, let go of any goals that you have in mind, just let the mind rest in that experience of the smile. So you have the smile on your face and you have a little smile in your heart. Now that you have that smile, you use that as an anchor for the feeling of loving kindness. So, as I said, you start with verbal statements in your mind, may I be happy or whatever it might be, or you use wholesome memories. You can use gratitude. You can think about the things that you're grateful for in life, and that immediately starts to uplift the mind.

So now that you have this feeling going, you let go of those statements, you let go of the gratitude, you let go of trying to bring up an image, and you let the mind rest in that feeling. And so for the first 10 minutes, you are sending yourself the loving-kindness, the metta, as it's known in Pali. And then for the remainder of the practice, you are going to be sending the feeling of loving-kindness to a spiritual friend, a kalyana mitta, as it's known in Pali.

So what is a kalyana mitta? What is a spiritual friend? A friend doesn't mean somebody who is perfect. It doesn't mean somebody who is free of any kind of shortcomings. It's somebody who you admire, somebody who you like, somebody who, when you think of them, brings an immediate smile to your face. So generally the instruction is that the spiritual friend should be somebody who is of the same sex and not a family member. It could be somebody you don't even know, somebody who you admire in public life. That's fine too. You could use me as a spiritual friend. Right? I need all the loving kindness I can get. So, please, I'm here.

So you bring up a spiritual friend. Now, you can imagine them in front of you, smiling at you. And you are connecting with them. You're connecting with their heart. And you want them to be happy. The wish is, I want this person to be free of any kind of suffering. I want them to be happy. I want them to be joyful. I want them to be uplifted.

And it doesn't matter how well you can visualize the spiritual friend. If it helps, you can imagine the spiritual friend staying in your heart. So you take the spiritual friend and you put them in your heart, and you allow them to bask in that glow of loving kindness in your heart. And you keep that going for as long as you can, for that minimum of 30 minutes. The first 10 minutes is a feeling of love and kindness to yourself, and then the remainder of the practice is to your spiritual friend.

Now, inevitably, you will get distracted. Face it. Come to terms with it. It's okay to be distracted. Tomorrow I will be discussing more about what these different kinds of distractions could be. But understand that distractions, or hindrances as we will call them as well, are our friends. Allow them to be there. You don't want to resist or push them.

You don't want to say, why is this craving coming up? Why is this restlessness coming up? Why is this sloth and torpor coming up? What's wrong with me? What's going on? Let go of all of that. They are there. It's okay. Be compassionate towards them. Understand that they're there and say, okay, I accept that you're here. So there is a way of dealing with these distractions. Very simple. This is what is known as samma vayama in Pali, which means right effort.

So there are four right efforts that the Buddha talks about. The first right effort is to prevent the arising of unarisen, unwholesome states. So what are unwholesome states? Unwholesome states are things that cause you tightness and tension in the mind and body. These states are emotions, afflictive states like anger, irritation, anxiety, restlessness, sloth and torpor, worry, sensual craving, doubt.

What does doubt mean? Am I doing the practice right? What's going on? I'm not sure what's going on. These kinds of thoughts. So how do you define a distraction? A distraction is only a distraction when it takes your attention completely away from the feeling of loving-kindness. What does that mean? Let's say you have the feeling of loving-kindness and you're sending it to yourself and you're staying with it for as long as you can, right? And there are some thoughts in the background. You notice that as you're experiencing the feeling of loving-kindness, there are certain thoughts in the background, certain images that come up, but your feeling is still there. Your attention on the feeling is still there. So that's not really a distraction, because they will go away. They're like little wisps in the background. But the moment your mind's attention gravitates towards those thoughts, gravitates towards those images, starts to identify with those distractions, then you are distracted. When your attention is no longer on its object, that is the feeling of loving-kindness, then you are distracted.

Because you have basically let go of proper attention, your mindfulness has slipped, and that's okay, it will happen. So what do you do with that? The four right efforts. So the four right efforts: the first right effort is to prevent the arising of any unarisen unwholesome states. The second right effort is to abandon the already arisen unwholesome states of mind. The third right effort is to generate a wholesome state of mind. And the fourth right effort is to keep that wholesome state of mind going.

So when Bhante Vimalaramsi, my teacher, started talking about this practice, he had different ways of explaining how right effort is. Initially he talked about this acronym called DROPSS, D-R-O-P-S-S. Don't resist or push, soften, smile. That's DROPSS. Later on it turned into the six R's. The six R's are recognize, release, relax, re-smile, return, and repeat. Now, I have simplified that into the four R's. So, what are the four R's that we're doing here? It's the same as the six R's, except we're taking out two.

First, we recognize that the mind was distracted. So, when we recognize what happens, the moment we recognize that we are distracted, we stop the flow of distractions from further arising. So now we have done the first right effort: we prevented the arising of unwholesome states. Then after you recognize, you relax. What does it mean to relax? When we say we relax, we're relaxing any kind of tightness and tension in the body or in the mind, because tightness and tension is a manifestation of tanha. Tanha is craving. What is craving? Craving is anytime the mind is not satisfied with the present moment, anytime the mind wants something.

Anytime the mind says, "I like it," and gets obsessed by it. Anytime the mind says, "I don't like it," and wants to push it away. Anytime the mind identifies with any experience that is craving. So how do you recognize craving? How do you recognize that there's tightness and tension through mindfulness? For a little while, your mind will be slipping and going here and there, right? Getting distracted by some kind of daydream or whatever distractions are there. But the moment you notice you got distracted, you have already done the first step of recognize.

And then the second step is to relax. What does it mean to relax? Notice any tightness and tension and let it go. Soften it. Any kind of contraction in the mind, bring spaciousness to it. You bring spaciousness to it. What does it mean to bring spaciousness? When your mind is contracted, it starts to become one-pointed. It starts to look at the distraction and starts to identify with it. But bringing expansion and spaciousness to the mind means you allow the mind to soften, and there is a certain level of expansion there. So that's relax: to tranquilize, to soften. And then you come back to your smile.

So recognize is the first step: that you got distracted. Relax is to let go of that distraction. Relax the mind and body. And then re-smile, which means notice if you're smiling or not. If you're smiling, keep that going. If you're not smiling, bring up the smile again. And then return back to your object of meditation. That's it. Every time you get distracted, that's all you have to do: recognize you got distracted, relax, re-smile, return. And you might have to do this a hundred times a minute, and that's okay. The first time around, it's a lot of distractions. The mind is getting used to the new schedule and so on and so forth. More often than not, you will experience a lot of slop and torpor because you're trying to get used to the new schedule, and that's okay. All you have to do is keep recognizing that the mind is starting to slip into one of these hindrances, relax, re-smile, return. It should take you no more than three to four seconds to do that whole process of recognize, relax, re-smile, return.

Now you'll also do what's known as walking meditation. So what is walking meditation? Walking meditation is where you walk at a normal pace, right? Just as you would walk down the street, and you keep your feeling of loving-kindness going. You keep the awareness of the spiritual friend going. So that just means you're aware of the feeling of loving-kindness in everything that you're doing. That's the practice. The practice isn't just about sitting. The practice is about being able to cultivate loving-kindness in everything that you do. So when you go for dinner tonight or breakfast tomorrow, whatever it is, notice where your mind is. Are you distracted, or is there a feeling of loving-kindness? Every time you take a morsel of food, when you're walking around, where is your mind? Is there a feeling of loving-kindness there? So that's why you do the walking practice. You just keep a feeling going. You get distracted, you do the same thing. So walking doesn't mean you get distracted by the beautiful scenery here or things that are going on, or wanting to pet the dogs or looking at the cats, and all of that.

Walking meditation means you're just walking at a normal pace and you keep the feeling going. If you're doing anything else where your mind's attention is going away from that feeling, then you use the four R's. Then you recognize, relax, re-smile, and return. So how long do you do the walking practice for? 20, 25 minutes, maybe 30 minutes at a time.

And walk at a normal pace. You don't have to walk very slowly. You don't have to try to notice each step that you're taking, right? Just walk normally. Now, in terms of when you go to bed tonight, try to make a determination of two things. Number one, try to make a determination of what time you'll wake up, right? If you're supposed to wake up at six o'clock, then try to wake up at 5:57 or 6:03 or something like that. This will help you with a more advanced practice in the future called determinations. Now, for those of you who

Make a determination before you go to bed that when you wake up, you will wake up with a smile on your face, and then keep that smile going no matter what. Right? So, as Bhante would say, I want you to have fun. This isn't a very serious retreat. This isn't about trying to make progress in anything. You have to let go of that, let go of all expectations. Right? So expectations, what are expectations? It's another word for craving. Expectations is dukkha under construction, right? So you have to let go of that and enjoy the moment as and when it arises. So for those of you who've done this practice before, you might be doing the six directions. So you continue doing that. You don't need to start from the beginning. You don't need to do the spiritual friend if you want. For the first five, ten minutes you can keep the feeling of loving-kindness to yourself going, and then from there you can radiate the feeling of loving-kindness in each of the six directions, about four to five minutes in each direction.

And then in all directions at the same time, and then keep that going. Now, because of the fact that you're doing the six directions, that means you are an advanced practitioner. And if you're an advanced practitioner, then I expect you to sit for at least one hour. I know I said expectations are the construction, but you can give me a pass, right? So sit for a minimum of one hour if you're an advanced practitioner. Now, there's a tendency for people who are advanced practitioners to go into what we call quiet mind very easily, and sometimes the mind wants to incline to quiet mind very quickly. But I would say before you do that, you always want to start with radiating in the six directions. And the reason is because you want to be able to

you want to be able to balance your mental energy. You want to be able to have enough energy so that you can keep the meditation going, because if your mind goes directly into quiet mind, it might not be quiet mind. It might just be dull mind that has a lot of sloth and torpor. So start with that. And then when you do the walking meditation, for the advanced practitioners, keep that feeling of loving-kindness in all directions going and walk for a minimum of 25 to 30 minutes. Now, some practical stuff. We will be starting interviews day after tomorrow. I don't know how many people are here. Do we know how many people are actually here? Let's see, they told me 32, but I don't know. This doesn't look like 32. Like 28 looks like... is it 32? Wow, such a small group. Okay. Good, so we have a full house.

So because of that, we have to divide the interviews into every other day. So everybody will get three interviews over the next six days, after day after tomorrow. And so there will be a sign-up sheet that will be here. You have the sign-up sheet: group A and group B. And then on the last day we will have interviews for everybody, so that'll be a long day for me. But anyway, there'll be three interviews. Try to keep the interview to 10 minutes. I'm going to ask you five basic questions. Try not to deviate from those five basic questions.

The first question I'll ask you is, what was your object of meditation? The second question I'll ask you is, what was your best sit? For your best sit, I don't need to know all your sits. I don't need to know your entire meditation history. Just tell me the best sit. What does the best sit mean? It means it's a sit where things were very interesting. Something happened there. There's a lot of joy, whatever happened. It was really surprising to you. It was something that was out of the blue. So some interesting highlights from there. So tell me about your best sit. Tell me how long you sat in that best sit. Tell me how long you were able to stay on the object of meditation. So what does that mean? How long were you able to stay on the object of meditation? So generally, you could probably, as a beginner, stay on it for about 5 seconds, 10 seconds, before you got distracted. I'm not looking for an exact number, but on average. So it's a good idea to write down, if you have a notepad, the practice that you were doing.

And try to formulate the answers to those questions and notice on average how long we're able to sit. So then the next question is how long were you able to sit? Let me start from the beginning. So what was your object in meditation? What was your best sit? How long was that best sit? How long were you able to stay with the object?

And when you got distracted, what did you do? Those are the five questions. So you'll have ten minutes to discuss your practice and ask any questions you have, and that's it. So let's see what else. I think that's about it. If I remember anything else, I will let you guys know. Any questions? Yes. Noble silence. So I think your phones, your laptops, or electronics are in complete noble silence. Vikraj will let you know about that. Just go to Vikraj. Vikraj will let you know. I'm not loud enough. Okay. So then we got to get this. Hello, but it's not on. I think it's on. Is it on? Can you hear me? No. Should I say everything over again?

Okay, what did you miss? Five questions. What was your object of meditation? What was your best sit? How long was your best sit? How long were you able to stay with the object of meditation? What did you do when you got distracted? Those are the five basic questions. What did you miss? Okay. That's a funny question, right? What did you miss? How would you know what I missed? How did you calculate how much time you have and how long you have been sitting? You've got to get a clock here, I think.

Good. You'll notice, this is when I sat, so this is the time you set. Keep it going, and when you open your eyes, notice what time it was on the clock. Recognize, relax, re-smile, return. Recognize means you notice you're distracted, preventing the arising of unwholesome states, abandoning the already arisen unwholesome states, generating a wholesome state of mind, and maintaining that wholesome state of mind. Those are the four right efforts.

Any other questions? Yeah. That's okay. Don't do anything except the spiritual friend. I will change your meditation as we continue with the interviews, so I think there's a handout being distributed. Object of the meditation means that which you're paying attention to, which is the feeling of loving-kindness, the feeling of loving-kindness, right, for yourself first, ten minutes, and then the spiritual friend. No, no, just in this retreat. Yeah. So for the best sit, that's a good question, because some people might do that. When I ask about your best sit, I mean your best sit in the last 24 hours, since we did an interview, or whenever it was, not prior to this retreat, whatever happened in the last one or two days. Yeah. No moving, no moving. Try to move as little as possible. Directions, so four or five minutes in each direction. Yeah, four or five minutes in each direction, and then the remainder is in all directions, and sit for a minimum of one hour. So there's different handouts being distributed. There's one which is the description of the right efforts, and then there is what's known as sharing merit.

That's what we do at the end of every talk. Yeah, no, no journaling or reading, no, nothing. You're here to practice, huh? Yes, you can take notes as much as you want. You can also take notes about your own practice in terms of what happened in the sit and stuff, but journaling beyond that, no. That's only for events. Yeah, don't read that either. Please don't read that. That's banned. You'll get a copy. You'll each get a copy at the end of the retreat of The Mind Without Pain. Anyone else?

Yeah. No, no, you don't need to do it. Don't do that. Because otherwise, now what's going to happen is, as soon as you do that, you might start to go into the next thing, in the next thing, in the next. Just recognize you got distracted. That's enough, because the next step of relaxing is what deals with that emotion. It deals with whatever it was that made the distraction happen. It's not necessary for you to know exactly what happened. You will start to see that in the practice on your own. Six directions, no, for 30 minutes. Yeah, you can start with five to ten minutes with the feeling of loving-kindness to yourself, and then radiate it. It's very important to that. Yeah, if you can't relax, then don't do anything, because if you can't relax, you try to relax. It's not the same as relaxing. When we say relax, what it really means is just to let go, to drop whatever it is that was there, the distraction. Right? So the mind is holding on to its attention to this distraction, and you recognize that the distraction is there, and you just let it go.

So in letting it go, you're relaxing, and try to spend a moment in that, because this is very important to understand. When you do the relax step, when you do the relaxed step, you are actually experiencing in that moment a mundane form of Nibbana. Because in that moment when you relax, your mind is open and spacious and clear, like the blue sky.

There's absolutely no conditions there for that moment. And so try to allow the mind to rest in that for a moment, and then come back to the smile. Anything else? Yeah. The six directions? Doesn't matter what the order is. Doesn't matter. As long as there's six directions. Okay, we can share some merit, but I need a paper, too.

Thank you. 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 the spirit 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.